Brand new luxury British and European cars are entering Russia despite being banned – here’s how
The Caucasus Mountain range in Georgia is one of the great sights in the south of Europe. Towering peaks, higher than any in the Alps, rise up from green meadows and grassy hills covered in wildflowers. Winding roads thread through deep valleys, overlooked by ornate Orthodox churches and monasteries.
But when I visited recently, I found a sight of an unexpected kind. The roads here have become dominated by a very particular kind of traffic: enormous convoys of trucks, carrying all manner of goods towards Georgia’s northerly neighbour: Russia. When I travelled north towards the checkpoint of Lars – the only road into Russia – I encountered a long queue of trucks waiting to clear customs and pass across.
I had come here in search of an answer to a puzzle that’s been preoccupying me for some time. It began with a chart. This chart showed that after Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions were imposed by G7 nations, including the UK, the flows of certain goods to that country suddenly cratered, falling to zero. That went for the so-called “dual use goods” you could use to create a makeshift weapon or put into a drone, but also for the luxury goods banned from sale into Russia.
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The theory back then was that by starving Russia’s war machine of the parts it needed and by starving senior Russian businesspeople and officials of the Western luxuries they coveted, European states could cause economic damage even if they weren’t directly at war with Vladimir Putin’s state.
But the data told a subtly different story. While exports of those goods to Russia certainly fell to zero, they suddenly rose sharply to a host of Russia’s neighbours. All of a sudden, Britain was sending drone equipment to Kyrgyzstan; all of a sudden, we were exporting luxury cars to Azerbaijan, in numbers we had never come anywhere close to before. Things got odder when you looked at Azerbaijan’s own export data, which showed a sudden spurt in its own luxury car exports (it does not manufacture luxury cars), to other countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia, including Georgia and Kazakhstan.
This posed a bit of a mystery. While sanctions experts said they suspected these Caucasus states were almost certainly being used as a kind of conduit, to send sanctioned goods to Russia, the data trail went cold when those cars entered the Caucasus. When we first raised this earlier in the year, Britain’s motor lobby group, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), said: “UK vehicle exports to Azerbaijan – as to many countries globally – have increased due to a number of factors, not least a flourishing economy, new model launches and pent-up demand.”
The implication, in other words, was that most if not all the cars stayed in the Caucasus (which would be entirely legal) instead of crossing into Russia (which would not).
A Porsche seen by Sky News near the border
Like the driveway of a Mayfair hotel
All of which is how I found myself in the Caucasus mountains recently to see for myself whether this story really stacked up. We had gone there following a tip-off. A colleague in Georgia had sent us a photo from the border checkpoint, where a set of informal car parks was filled with the kind of concentration of luxury cars you would normally only expect to see outside a Mayfair hotel, or in a country like Dubai. There were Mercedes, high-end Lexus, BMWs and, there among a large number of German cars, two Range Rovers.
So we travelled out to Georgia to find out whether there were really UK-made cars still travelling into Russia. Now in some respects, our focus on cars might seem odd: after all, there are far more egregious breaches of the sanctions regime. Our previous investigation found radar parts and electrical equipment have also been sent from the UK to the Caucasus and Central Asia following the imposition of sanctions.
A Lamborghini and two Mercedes G-wagons
But the reason we were focused on cars is that while there’s no way of telling from the outside what’s inside a cargo truck or a shipping container, vehicles are far harder to move secretly. In short, if we could show that European, and for that matter British cars were being moved into Russia, then it would demonstrate visually, for the first time, how these sanctions are being broken.
We spent two days close to the border, watching the process as cars and other trucks were brought there, and then sent over into Russia. We spoke to numerous men engaged in the trade. What we discovered was a complex but finely-honed system designed to transport European cars into Russia.
A Mercedes seen by Sky News
‘This car will go to Russia and will remain there’
One group of men is charged with bringing the cars to the border – sometimes from showrooms in the capital, Tbilisi, sometimes from the Black Sea ports of Poti or Batumi. Mostly they don’t know where the cars come from beforehand – whether directly from countries like the UK or via other Caucasus states like Azerbaijan.
Once they bring the cars to the border, they leave them there in a set of car parks where they sit for a few days until the necessary paperwork is completed. That paperwork is not without its own complications: after European states imposed sanctions, Georgia introduced its own bans on sending cars into Russia. However, there are numerous loopholes that enable you to bring the cars across nonetheless.
A Porsche waits at the car park
One way is to have the cars registered and custom cleared in Armenia before they come up north to the Lars checkpoint in Russia. Sometimes those taking the cars into Russia are advised to say they are only being driven through Russia to Kyrgyzstan but, as one Russian YouTuber puts it: “Let’s be honest: everyone understands everything perfectly well – everyone from the people who will register you at the traffic police and the people at the Georgian border – that this car will go to Russia and will remain there.”
Either way, eventually these cars are issued with transit registration plates, after which they can be driven over the border. And since Georgians can travel visa-free into Russia, and vice versa, taking the cars across the border is simply a question of driving them there, leaving the car on the other side where it will be collected by another group of men, and then hitching a ride back into Georgia.
Checkpoint at the Georgia-Russia border
Everyone wins – except the Ukrainians
We saw numerous cars being taken across the border in this way, and here’s the key thing about this system: first, no single person in the chain can easily be fingered for any crime – even though, when you put it all together, it certainly amounts to a contravention of sanctions law. Second, and just as importantly for our purposes, it means that the cars don’t show up in the customs data. From the point of view of a statistician, they simply arrive in Azerbaijan or Georgia and then they disappear.
This, we learnt, was only one of numerous routes sanctioned goods are taking into Russia, but such routes are, all told, a large part of the explanation for how Mr Putin is able to keep his regime equipped with the components it needs to wage war, and the luxuries needed to reward his cronies. The upshot is contrary to the promises when these sanctions were imposed: Russia’s economy remains strong, there are no shortages of essential and non-essential goods in Moscow and, along the way, Caucasus states like Georgia and Azerbaijan have seen an enormous economic boost from serving as an informal trade conduit. Everyone wins – except the Ukrainians.
Traffic waiting to cross from Georgia into Russia
But while we saw this process carried out at the border for many German cars – Mercedes and Porsches were the most prevalent brands – we didn’t find the Range Rovers our contact had photographed a few days earlier. They were, presumably, already over the border.
So after a few days we headed south towards Tbilisi to talk to more people in the export trade. But just outside the Georgian capital, we suddenly spotted a convoy of trucks heading in the opposite direction. Among those trucks were two car carriers with what looked like brand new Range Rovers. We turned the car around and began to follow them up the mountain, realising that we were witnessing this shadow trade route in person.
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April: British cars going to the Caucasus
Up until then there had been no clear filmed evidence that British cars are actually leaving the Caucasus for Russia. So we followed the car carriers as they travelled slowly up the mountain roads towards the border.
When we arrived at the border, the atmosphere in the car park had transformed. What had been a quiet place during the day was a hive of activity. Clearly this was peak time – it seemed that most of the car deliveries happened in the dead of night. Not only were there two Range Rovers, there were countless other luxury cars, including top of the range Mercedes G-Wagons and a Lamborghini Urus.
When day broke the next morning, we checked the VIN numbers on the Range Rovers – the numerical fingerprint displayed on the windscreen, allowing you to trace these vehicles. They showed that these cars were brand new, made in Solihull in 2024. A document visible on the windscreen of one of them showed the date of April 2024.
Boxes inside one of the cars
No one is trying to hide what’s happening
Those dates were significant: we at Sky News had warned CAT logistics groups about the existence of this trade in March 2024. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and the SMMT had been aware of the risks posed by these vehicles ending up in the Caucasus before these cars had been manufactured. Yet here they still were, en route to Russia, joining the line to cross over the border.
A spokesperson for JLR said: “JLR stopped sales of vehicles to Russia and Belarus in February 2022. Sanctions compliance is a corporate priority, as well as an obligation for our third-party retail network.
“An ongoing investigation into these vehicles has confirmed they were not supplied by JLR to the Georgia market. They were supplied by JLR to retailers in countries that do not share a border with Russia and then in turn sold to customers in those countries, which are subject to similar sanctions and export controls as we are in the UK in relation to Russia.
Makeshift car park full of luxury cars, including Range Rovers, near the border
“JLR, along with its retailer network, continues to adapt its compliance strategies to counter the efforts of third parties seeking to circumvent sanctions against Russia and Belarus.”
An HMG spokesperson said:
“The UK has banned the export of thousands of goods to Russia, including cars. Over £20bn of UK trade with Russia is now under sanctions and we will continue to ratchet up economic pressure until it ends its brutal invasion of Ukraine.
“We are also working with UK businesses and exporters to ensure sanctioned goods are not supplied to Russia, and we expect them to continue to check their compliance with relevant UK sanctions.”
However, while UK carmakers and authorities insist they are doing everything they can to clamp down on these unofficial trade routes, perhaps the most startling takeaway from our investigation is that there on the ground in Georgia, no one is trying to hide what’s happening. Everyone knows these high-end European cars aren’t supposed to be going into Russia, yet they are passing over the border one by one, every day. Everyone knows what’s happening, but no one is doing anything to stop it.
And one has to presume much the same thing is happening with all types of goods, including those inside the bowels of the trucks lined up at the border. The passage of these cars is only the most visible evidence that the sanctions regime is not preventing expensive, important items travelling from Europe into Russia. For the time being, policymakers and businesses seem powerless or unwilling to prevent this murky trade.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been killed after airstrikes in Beirut, the Israeli army has said.
Recent weeks have seen Israel unleash a barrage of strikes against Lebanon after it turned its attention to the conflict at its northern border.
On Friday, Israel targeted the capital Beirut with a series of attacks claiming to have struck the headquarters of Hezbollah.
People stand near a picture of Nasrallah during the funeral of a Hezbollah member. Pic: Reuters
People watch Hassan Nasrallah delivering a televised address in Beirut. Pic: Reuters
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it carried out a “precise strike” on Hezbollah’s “central headquarters”, which it claimed was “embedded under residential buildings in the heart of the Dahieh in Beirut”.
The first wave of attacks shook windows across the city and sent thick clouds of smoke billowing into the air.
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Pic: AP
While Israel stressed it had been a “precise” strike, preliminary figures from Lebanon’s health ministry confirmed at least six other people were killed and 91 were wounded.
Israel said Nasrallah was the intended target and initially there were claims he had survived.
However, after several hours of confusion, his death was confirmed by Israel.
“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorise the world,” the IDF said.
Hours later, a defiant Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s death but vowed their fight with Israel would continue after confirming they had fired upon sites in northern Israel.
“The leadership of Hezbollah pledges to the highest, holiest, and most precious martyr in our path full of sacrifices and martyrs to continue its jihad in confronting the enemy, supporting Gaza and Palestine, and defending Lebanon and its steadfast and honourable people,” they said.
Recent days have seen Israel launch strikes in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and Bhamdoun
The Israeli strike that allegedly took Nasrallah’s life was on residential buildings in Dahieh, Beirut
Alongside claiming to have killed Nasrallah, the IDF said it had killed a number of other commanders, including Ali Karaki, the commander of the southern front.
The country’s military said the strike was carried out while Hezbollah leadership met at their underground headquarters in Dahieh.
In the aftermath of the most recent attacks, an Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment on whether US-made Mark 84 heavy bombs were used in the strike against Nasrallah.
“The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said in a media briefing.
He continued: “We hope this will change Hezbollah’s actions.”
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Hezbollah leader killed says IDF
He added the number of civilian casualties was unclear but blamed Hezbollah for positioning itself in residential areas.
“We’ve seen Hezbollah carry out attacks against us for a year. It’s safe to assume that they are going to continue carrying out their attacks against us or try to,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iran said it was in constant contact with Hezbollah and other allies to determine its “next step”, but Reuters reported the country’s supreme leader was transferred to a secure location in light of the latest attack.
Speaking after the attack, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims “to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah” and said: “The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” state media reported.
Nasrallah’s death will be a blow to Hezbollah as it continues to reel from a campaign of escalating Israeli attacks.
Flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Saturday. Pic: AP
Nasrallah is latest Hezbollah leader to fall
While Nasrallah’s death is certainly the most high-profile of recent attacks, it continues a trend of Israel targeting Hezbollah’s leadership structure.
Also on Saturday, in the early hours of the morning, the commander of the group’s missile unit and his deputy were killed in another Israeli attack in southern Lebanon.
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Then, in a separate strike overnight on Friday, the IDF said it killed the head of Hamas’s network in southern Syria.
This followed the deaths of other senior commanders, including Muhammad Qabisi, earlier in the month.
A Swiss teenage cyclist with “a bright future ahead of her” has died a day after suffering a serious head injury at the world championships.
Muriel Furrer crashed while competing on rain-slicked roads in the junior women’s road race in her home country.
The 18-year-old rider fell heavily on Thursday in a forest area south of the city of Zurich and was airlifted to hospital by helicopter, reportedly in a critical condition.
Race organisers announced on Friday she had died.
The cyclist died at Zurich University Hospital. Pic: Reuters
They said in a statement: “Muriel Furrer sadly passed away today at Zurich University Hospital.”
The UCI governing body for world cycling paid tribute to her in a statement on its website, entitled “The cycling world mourns the loss of Muriel Furrer”.
It read: “It is with great sadness that the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and the Organising Committee of the 2024 UCI Road and Para-cycling Road World Championships today learned the tragic news of the death of young Swiss cyclist Muriel Furrer.
“With the passing of Muriel Furrer, the international cycling community loses a rider with a bright future ahead of her. We offer sincere condolences to Muriel Furrer’s family, friends and her Federation Swiss Cycling.”
Swiss Cycling said in a post on X: “Our hearts are broken, we have no words. It is with a heavy heart and infinite sadness that we have to say goodbye to Muriel Furrer today.
“We are losing a warm-hearted and wonderful young woman who always had a smile on her face. There is no understanding, only pain and sadness.”
At a news conference, a director of the Swiss organising committee Olivier Senn said he could not confirm exactly where the crash happened.
Police and the public prosecutor’s office were investigating the incident, Mr Senn said.
Furrer had finished in 44th position in the junior women’s time trial earlier in the week.
The rider’s family has asked for the championships – which last for nine days – to continue, said UCI sports director Peter van den Abeele.
The women’s and men’s elite races, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday respectively, will use the same stretch of road where the fatal crash happened.
A UCI gala event scheduled for Saturday evening has been cancelled, along with public events to mark races planned for Friday.
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Second Swiss cyclist death
Furrer is the second Swiss cyclist to die in just over a year after crashing on home roads.
At the Tour de Suisse in June 2023, Gino Mader went off the road and down a ravine during a descent. The 26-year-old died from his injuries the next day.
“Obviously it is another tragic death,” Mr Senn said. “There are a lot of similarities, similar feelings. Today is about Muriel.”
World
Hassan Nasrallah killed: Decapitated and in disarray, Hezbollah and Iran must now decide to fight or backdown
The leader of Hezbollah is dead.
This is a very big moment, not just in this conflict but for the future of the Middle East.
In 2006, the last Lebanon War, Israel tried and failed to kill him.
Last night, in a huge series of strikes on southern Beirut, they finally hit their target.
Read more: Who was Hassan Nasrallah?
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People watch the speech of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah earlier this month. Pic: AP
A man checks a damaged building at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Choueifat, south east of Beirut on Saturday. Pic: AP
Over the past 18 years Nasrallah has grown Hezbollah in his image, expanding its forces, building its infrastructure and significantly expanding its arsenal.
He wasn’t just the leader of Hezbollah, he was a global figurehead of anti-Israel resistance.
With Iran’s help, Hezbollah became one of the best armed non-state militaries in the world.
It is now decapitated and in disarray.
During the past decades Israel has also been at work, steadily gathering intelligence on Nasrallah and Hezbollah, building a vast database of information, an effort which arguably distracted them from better understanding the intentions of Hamas.
The intelligence successes of the past days have helped restore Israel’s reputation after the stunning failures on October 7.
Iran and Hezbollah must choose
This is a pivotal moment.
Iran and Hezbollah must now decide how to respond: fight, or backdown.
The strike also killed Ali Karaqi, commander of Hezbollah’s southern front and labelled as the second most wanted by the IDF.
It is still unclear who else died in the strike, but given the location and the presence of top officials, it seems likely that other senior figures would have been eliminated too.
Nasrallah will be replaced.
The assassination of enemy leaders can prove to be a short-term victory because they are often succeeded by someone more formidable than before, as witnessed by the killing of the former Hezbollah leader Abbas al Moussawi in 1992.
He was succeeded by Nasrallah.
The working assumption is that the group will respond with barrages of missiles into Israel, probably targeting Tel Aviv.
But Hezbollah’s command structure has been severely degraded by Israel.
Nasrallah had become isolated as the IDF had steadily killed commanders over a fortnight of scything airstrikes on their compounds in Beirut and elsewhere.
It will probably take time to co-ordinate a response and it will probably be done with Iranian guidance.
Nasrallah might be dead, but Hezbollah isn’t
Hezbollah is badly wounded, not just as a paramilitary force but in the eyes of the Lebanese people, many of whom are angry their country is now facing another period of devastating violence.
This might be a moment for more moderate voices within Lebanon, including the national armed forces, to step in.
As the war escalated over recent weeks, noticeable divisions emerged between Tehran and Nasrallah.
He remained an important ally, however, a trusted advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, and this will come as a personal blow to him.
Having resisted the opportunity to get involved so far, Iran might decide the time has come to take the gloves off and deploy what is left of the thousands of missiles they’ve provided Hezbollah with.
Alternatively, after such a difficult ten days, Tehran might conclude that this round of fighting needs to end and pull back with its main proxy still in some shape to rebuild and fight another day.
With such momentum behind Israel, Iran will also be concerned about its own fate and that of its smaller proxies in Iraq and Syria.
Ultimately, the reason for Hezbollah’s existence – to act as insurance against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – hasn’t changed, but if Tehran calculates its proxies can no longer act as that shield it might try to accelerate its nuclear programme.
Could a ground invasion follow?
The Israeli government has choices of its own: order a ground invasion of southern Lebanon or continue with an air campaign that has delivered such dramatic successes.
There will be strong and compelling voices in Netanyahu’s cabinet urging him to take advantage of the situation and send troops in, but Hezbollah is not defeated, thousands of its soldiers remain and they are likely hiding in the vast tunnel network under the hills across the border.
Even a limited ground invasion risks large loss of life, on both sides, and the potential Israel will be lured into something more prolonged than it intended.
Nasrallah’s death might change the dynamic in Gaza too.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, has clung on and rejected ceasefire attempts in the hope that Hezbollah and Iran would go to war with Israel, dragging its enemy into a multi-front and unwinnable conflict.
That might still happen, but just as Nasrallah became isolated, so too is Sinwar.
The much trumpeted “unity of arenas” has failed to join up.
The Middle East might often look chaotic to outsiders, but there are unspoken rules generally acknowledged and followed by belligerents.
For years Hezbollah and Israel acted within the unwritten but understood parameters of a shadow war.
Then, eleven months ago on 8 October, Hezbollah attacked Israel out of solidarity with Hamas.
Nasrallah tied Lebanon’s fate to Hamas, insisting that Hezbollah would only stop when the fighting ended in Gaza.
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That ceasefire never came.
The rules shifted as the crossfire escalated, but it remained broadly contained within boundaries understood by both sides.
Until two weeks ago, 17 September, when thousands of pagers started exploding across Beirut and Lebanon.
It is possible Nasrallah had concluded that Israel was war-weary, and he overestimated the domestic and international pressure Netanyahu was under to end the fighting.
He might have believed that Netanyahu had neither the will nor the support to open up another front.
He, like so many of us, maybe assumed US influence on Israel would prevail.
Those miscalculations cost him his life.
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