Exploring the Consequences of Organised Crime and Illegal Trade Displacement on Eurasia
Project Live in second phase
PROJECT TEAM
Dr Erica Marat
College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University
Contact: Erica.marat.civ@ndu.edu
Dr. Erica Marat is a Professor at the College of Security Affairs of the National Defense University. Her research focuses on violence, mobilisation and security institutions in Eurasia, India, and Mexico. Before joining NDU, Dr. Marat was a visiting scholar at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center. She is an author of The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (OUP 2018) and other books. Her articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Washington Post, Just Security, and Open Democracy.
Dr Alexander Kupatadze
King’s College London
Contact: Alexander.kupatadze@kcl.ac.uk
Dr Alexander Kupatadze is Associate Professor at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s College Dr Kupatadze taught at the School of International Relations, St Andrews University. He held the postdoctoral positions at George Washington University (2010-11), Oxford University (2012-13) and Princeton University (2013-14). His research specialisation is organised crime, corruption, public sector reform, informal politics and crime-terror nexus. His regional expertise is post-Soviet Eurasia. His work has appeared in Journal of Democracy, Theoretical Criminology, Nonproliferation Review, British Journal of Political Science and other leading journals. His research has been funded by European Union, British Academy and Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
PROJECT SUMMARY
The war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia are leading to tectonic changes in Eurasia’s crime and illegality ecosystem and environment. Organised crime is taking new forms in the region, its borderlands, and its seaports. The war has disrupted licit and illicit supply chains throughout the region, changed routes of trafficking, and shifted production of illicit commodities. Meanwhile, sanctions on Russia have made established forms of trade suddenly illegal, making the illicit supply of certain goods the only way to meet unchanged consumer demand, at potentially high profit margins for criminals. As a consequence, new opportunities arose for criminal networks, including the smuggling of banned and sanctioned commodities (e.g., luxury goods, semiconductors, microchips, etc.), smuggling of deficit products (goods facing shortages in Russia and Ukraine due to disrupted supply chains), trading in looted commodities (e.g., cultural artefacts stolen from museums under occupation in Ukraine), and cash smuggling from Russia and Ukraine to neighbouring countries. Simultaneously, illegal arms markets have expanded as weapons were diverted from the frontlines, and human trafficking increased exponentially due to the large outflow of refugees and military-age men from Ukraine.
Phase one of the project created greater understanding of the changing dynamics in respect of:
a) Threats in borderlands and seaports, such as the displacement of threats, shifting trafficking routes, and trafficking of new commodities;
b) Opportunities in neighbouring countries as legal companies and criminal enterprises step in to fill the void of meeting the demand for sanctioned goods in Russia;
c) Actors in smuggling and trafficking, specifically who the perpetrators are on the ground: private companies, individuals, underworld networks;
d) Elite bargains related to illicit flows. Are new lucrative opportunities emerging as an issue for bargaining or intra-elite deals? Are emerging opportunities confined to borderlands and seaports, or do they extend to capitals?
e) Law enforcement capacity, specifically how security forces are coping with large inflows and outflows of trafficked commodities and how customs and border authorities are catching up with innovative schemes.
In the project’s second phase, the research aims to identify new and emerging illicit activity in the target countries from actors who have either been displaced from Ukraine or who are emerging as a response to the war and sanctions on Russia. Additionally, it aims to identify factors that make jurisdictions open to illicit activities and note how these reasons differ from those of neighbouring countries. It will also identify major companies involved in sanctions-busting and track their links with political elites.
Research papers and briefing notes resulting from phase one can be viewed and downloaded below. If you’ve found the research useful in your day-to-day work, please do let us know by sending us an email at: impact-socace@contacts.bham.ac.uk
PUBLICATIONS
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Under the radar: how Russia outmanoeuvres Western sanctions with help from its neighbours (SOC ACE Research Paper RP18)
Criminal Geographies: How the Russo-Ukrainian War Reshaped Global Crime Networks (SOC ACE Research Paper RP 40
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Under the Radar: How Russia Outmanoeuvres Western Sanctions with Help from its Neighbours (SOC ACE Briefing Note 25)
Criminal Geographies: How the Russo-Ukrainian War Reshaped Global Crime Networks (SOC ACE Briefing Note 41)
ENGAGEMENT
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How Russia is outmanoeuvring Western sanctions, KCL’s ‘WORLD: we got this’ podcast, Season 5, Ep. 1 , Dr Alexander Kupatadze, 25 September 2023
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