# REPORT: Ukrainian grain for Shahed drones — the network bypassing sanctions

> Between September 2025 and March 2026, ships left Turkish ports loaded with Ukrainian grain. Official destination: Iran. Real destination, according to an investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU): payment in kind for the Shahed drones that Tehran supplies to Moscow to strike Ukrainian cities. The same cities whose fields produced that grain. The irony is terrible.

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Reportage
- Published: 2026-06-29
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/reportage-grain-ukrainien-contre-drones-shahed-le-reseau-qui-contourne-les-sanct

## Introduction: An investigation exposing the mechanics of economic war crime

### From Ukrainian fields to Iran's drone factories: a criminal chain

Between **September 2025** and **March 2026**, ships left **Turkish ports** loaded with Ukrainian grain. Official destination: **Iran**. Real destination, according to an investigation by the **Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)**: payment in kind for the **Shahed drones** that **Tehran** supplies to **Moscow** to strike Ukrainian cities. The same cities whose fields produced that grain. The irony is terrible. The crime is documented.

A Russian national named **Vazha Dzhashi** sits at the center of the case. According to Ukrainian investigators, he organized the concealed shipments through a network of **shell companies**, using opaque commercial structures to obscure the trail and allow stolen or diverted Ukrainian grain to feed the Iranian economy that produces the drones used against **Ukraine**.

### The Shahed drone and its impact on Ukrainian cities

Iranian **Shahed-136** drones, designated **Geran-2** by **Russia** to obscure their origin, have been among the most destructive weapons in the Russian arsenal since **2022**. Inexpensive — costing tens of thousands of dollars per unit — but effective at saturating air defenses through sheer volume, they have caused massive destruction across Ukrainian energy infrastructure, residential buildings, and industrial facilities. In **2026**, they continue to fall on Ukrainian cities almost daily.

Understanding that grain grown in Ukrainian fields — sometimes the very fields where Ukrainian soldiers are fighting — may indirectly finance these strikes reveals the depth of the networks circumventing Western sanctions. This is no longer merely illicit finance: it is active complicity in the war against **Ukraine**.

*Ukrainian grain paying for Shahed drones that strike Ukraine. If this fact were definitively established before an international tribunal, it would constitute one of the clearest proofs of deliberate complicity in a war of aggression. It is also one of the most cynical documented examples of sanctions circumvention I have seen. The obscenity of this cycle demands more than diplomatic discomfort — it demands enforcement action.*

## The Iran-Russia axis: military cooperation defying sanctions

### Hundreds of drones per week: the scale of the partnership

The military cooperation between **Iran** and **Russia** has been documented since **2022**. What began as periodic deliveries of **Shahed** drones has become a structured industrial relationship. A **production facility** in the **Alabuga special economic zone** in **Tatarstan**, established with Iranian technical assistance, now produces drones at a rate that has reduced Russia's dependence on direct Iranian deliveries while maintaining the technological partnership. In **2025**, estimates placed production at several thousand drones per month at this complex alone.

**Iran** derives multiple benefits from this relationship: payments in hard currency or equivalents such as grain, military technology transfers from Russia, and a strategic relationship with a nuclear power that provides partial diplomatic cover against Western pressure. The cooperation extends far beyond drones — it encompasses ballistic missiles, components for Iranian nuclear and space programs, and intelligence exchanges that deepen the partnership with each passing year.

### Turkish ports as sanctions circumvention hubs

**Turkey** occupies a particular geopolitical and economic position in this case. Turkish ports — notably **Istanbul**, **Izmir**, and **Mersin** — have become transit points for numerous commercial flows circumventing Western sanctions against **Russia**. Turkish customs statistics show a dramatic increase in imports of sanctioned goods from Europe and their re-export to **Russia** since **2022**. This pattern is documented, publicly acknowledged, and has so far generated inadequate diplomatic consequences for a **NATO member state**.

In the grain case, Turkish ports allegedly served as an intermediate transit point: grain arrives from Ukrainian sources or is presented as Ukrainian grain available on international markets, then shipped toward **Iran** from **Turkey**, obscuring the documentary trail that would directly link the shipments to the Iranian weapons supplied to **Russia**. The architecture of concealment is deliberate and sophisticated.

*Turkey is a NATO member and a sanctions circumvention hub — that strategic tension cannot be ignored indefinitely. Ankara is playing both sides: treaty ally of the West, economic partner of Russia in practice. This ambiguity has real costs for Ukraine. And it deserves to be named clearly in every diplomatic forum where Turkey seeks Western goodwill.*

## Shell companies and the mechanics of financial opacity

### Vazha Dzhashi and the network of empty shells

**Vazha Dzhashi** is described by Ukrainian investigators as the key organizer of the concealed shipments. The alleged modus operandi is standard in sanctions circumvention: companies registered in low-transparency jurisdictions — potentially in the **United Arab Emirates**, **Cyprus**, or other offshore centers — opaque ownership chains that make identifying real beneficiaries difficult, and apparently legitimate commercial contracts that disguise the actual nature of the transactions underneath layers of paper legitimacy.

This technique is well-established and widely used by Russian actors to access sanctioned goods and services since **2022**. Western and Ukrainian investigators have documented hundreds of similar cases: microprocessors exported through third-country resellers, machine tools routed through Kazakh or Armenian intermediaries, chemical precursors for explosive powders transiting through apparently innocent commercial networks. The Dzhashi case is one documented instance of a systemic problem.

### The SBU investigation and its current limits

The **SBU** investigation is ongoing, and publicly available information is partial. The legal characterization — **payment in kind** for drones rather than simple grain trading — is difficult to establish without access to communications between the parties involved, the banking records of the shell companies, and contracts explicitly linking grain deliveries to drone supplies. This is precisely the kind of evidence investigators are working to assemble.

The value of the grain shipments in question remains uncertain based on available information. But as a reference point: **100,000 tonnes of grain** at current world prices represents approximately **$25 to $30 million** — a sum sufficient to finance several hundred **Shahed** drones, whose unit cost is estimated between **$50,000 and $100,000**. The order of magnitude is plausible. The pattern matches dozens of documented analogues.

*I want to be careful here: the investigation is ongoing, the accusations are not yet proven before a court. But the scheme described is plausible, documented in numerous analogous cases, and deserves serious attention. If the facts are confirmed, this is a case that should produce sanctions against identified intermediaries — including any Turkish entities potentially implicated. Caution does not mean inaction.*

## The Ukrainian war economy under pressure

### Economic contraction and resilience: a contradictory balance sheet

The grain-for-drones case emerges in a difficult economic context for **Ukraine**. In **June 2026**, **Ukraine** recorded its sharpest economic contraction since the wartime recovery began — a figure published by **Euromaidan Press** and confirmed by multiple economic sources. The causes are multiple: infrastructure destruction, population displacement, logistics disruptions caused by strikes on rail lines and ports.

The Ukrainian agricultural sector has been particularly affected. Millions of hectares of agricultural land in occupied or near-front territories are inaccessible. Russian strikes on storage facilities, agricultural cooperatives, and transport infrastructure have disrupted export cycles. And now, the hypothesis that Ukrainian grain may have been diverted to **Iran** in exchange for drones striking **Ukraine** adds a layer of sordid irony to an already difficult economic reality.

### Dependence on agricultural exports as strategic vulnerability

**Ukraine** is one of the world's top exporters of cereals, oilseeds, and vegetable oil. These agricultural exports represent a significant share of its foreign currency earnings, which are indispensable for financing imports — including weapons and military equipment. Any disruption to these exports, whether through Russian blockades in the **Black Sea**, strikes on port infrastructure, or fraudulent diversions, directly weakens **Ukraine**'s financial capacity to sustain its war effort.

The **Dzhashi case** therefore illustrates a systemic risk: malicious actors, Russian or otherwise, seeking to divert Ukrainian economic resources to directly or indirectly finance the Russian war machine. This is a form of economic warfare targeting one of the vital arteries of Ukrainian survival — and it requires a systemic enforcement response, not case-by-case diplomatic notes.

*Ukraine fights for survival while managing a contracting economy. When on top of that malicious actors divert its agricultural exports to finance the drones falling on its cities — that is an accumulation of injustices that must be named. And the structures that allow this kind of diversion must be closed. Not eventually. Now.*

## The Western response: sanctions with holes

### The sanctions regime against Russia and its gaps

Since **2022**, the **West** has adopted successive packages of sanctions against **Russia** — **14 EU packages** in four years — targeting individuals, entities, and economic sectors supporting the Russian war effort. These sanctions have had real effects: difficulty accessing Western technologies, contraction of certain export sectors, pressure on the Russian financial system. But they also have systemic gaps that have been consistently exploited.

Third-party countries — **Turkey**, the **UAE**, **Kazakhstan**, **Armenia**, **Georgia** — have become circumvention hubs precisely because they are not themselves under sanction and trade with **Russia** remains legal for them. Shell companies registered in offshore jurisdictions insert themselves into commercial chains to obscure the real origin or destination of goods. The enforcement architecture has been built reactively, always catching up to circumvention networks that have already adapted and moved on.

### Iran and sanctions: a target the West struggles to contain

**Iran** is itself subject to severe sanctions regimes from the **United States** and, to a lesser extent, the **EU**. But these sanctions have not prevented the development of its drone industry nor its deliveries to **Russia**. The reason is straightforward: **Tehran** has developed expertise in sanctions circumvention extending over several decades. Iranian financial and commercial networks are structurally adapted to operate outside Western financial circuits.

In this context, the Ukrainian grain-to-Iranian-drones case illustrates how two sanctioned economies — **Russia** and **Iran** — can build exchange systems that completely bypass the dollar, the euro, and Western financial institutions. This is a lesson about the limits of unilateral sanctions and the necessity of more vigorous enforcement against third-party enablers who make these flows possible.

*Sanctions against Russia and Iran have gaps large enough for entire fleets of grain ships to pass through. That is not inevitable — it is the result of insufficient political will to sanction the third-party intermediaries who enable these flows. Turkey, the UAE, Kazakhstan all have a great deal to lose if the West actually decided to close these doors. They have not been made to feel that cost clearly enough.*

## The implications for global food security policy

### Ukraine as the world's breadbasket — and the diversion of its resources

**Ukraine** feeds hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Its wheat, corn, and sunflower oil exports are essential for food security across much of **Africa**, the **Middle East**, and **Asia**. This is why **Russia** targeted Ukrainian exports from the beginning of the conflict — blockading **Black Sea** ports, striking silos and storage infrastructure, and now potentially allowing the diversion of legitimate commercial flows.

The grain case reveals that the war against **Ukraine** has implications extending far beyond the territorial conflict. It affects global food security, international agricultural markets, and now potentially the legitimate commercial chains that allow **Ukraine** to feed its trading partners while financing its defense. Every tonne of diverted Ukrainian grain is a tonne that does not reach the market — and a tonne that may be financing the weapons killing the people who grew it.

### The need for enhanced traceability of Ukrainian grain

One practical lesson from this case is the need to strengthen the traceability of Ukrainian agricultural exports to prevent their diversion. Rigorous origin certification systems, enhanced customs audits in transit ports — including Turkish ports — and international cooperation to identify suspicious flows could significantly reduce diversion opportunities. This is technically feasible. The political will of **Ukraine**'s trading partners is the determining variable.

**Turkey**, as a **NATO** member and alleged primary transit hub in the case, bears particular responsibility. Turkish ports have derived considerable revenues from trade with **Russia** since **2022**. If solid evidence establishes that fraudulent flows passed through Turkish ports with or without the knowledge of Turkish customs authorities, **Ankara** will need to answer for this before its Atlantic Alliance partners. The question should be asked — loudly and formally.

*Grain traceability as a national security tool — that would have sounded absurd in 2019. In 2026, it is a strategic necessity. Every kilogram of Ukrainian grain that ends up in the Iranian economy without traceability is a kilogram that escapes accountability — and that could, indirectly, fuel the war machine attacking Ukraine. The technology to track it exists. The will to use it is the obstacle.*

## The Russian domestic drone production chain

### The Alabuga factory: Russia makes itself independent of Tehran

Since **2023**, **Russia** has inaugurated in the **Alabuga special economic zone** in **Tatarstan** a facility for producing **Shahed** drones under Iranian license. This installation, built with Iranian technical assistance according to Western intelligence sources, allows **Moscow** to produce drones at a rate that now exceeds Tehran's direct delivery capacity while maintaining the technological partnership. In **2025**, estimates placed production at several thousand units per month at this complex.

This vertical integration modifies the threat economics. If **Russia** produces its own low-cost drones domestically, the need for direct grain payments to **Iran** may diminish. But Ukrainian investigators maintain that the flows analyzed correspond to a period before **Alabuga**'s full capacity — a time when Iranian dependence was still strong and the grain-for-drones barter had clear economic logic. The timeline matters for understanding when this scheme was most active.

### Western electronic components in Russian drones

Alongside the Iran-Russia axis, another supply pathway concerns experts: **Western-origin electronic components** found in the wreckage of downed **Shahed** drones in Ukraine. Processors manufactured in the **United States**, **Europe**, and **Japan** have been identified in this debris by Ukrainian experts. These components reach **Russia** and **Iran** through secondary distribution networks, passing through third countries not subject to sanctions.

This reality illustrates the full complexity of the problem. Even if the **West** perfectly controlled its direct exports to **Russia** and **Iran**, circumvention through third parties would remain a significant access pathway. This is an economic war operating at multiple speeds, where sanctioned actors often prove more agile than the bureaucracies attempting to block them. Speed of adaptation is the enforcement challenge — and it is one that Western agencies have not yet fully met.

*The Alabuga factory is an admission that sanctions pushed Russia to adapt rather than capitulate. That is a painful lesson about the limits of sectoral sanctions applied too slowly. But this adaptation has a cost — it creates new dependencies, new vulnerabilities that well-targeted Ukrainian strikes can exploit. Alabuga burns drones. Ukrainian drones can burn Alabuga.*

## International precedents: resources-for-weapons exchanges

### A practice as old as international commerce

Barter exchanges of primary resources for weapons have a long history in international relations. During the **Cold War**, the **USSR** regularly exchanged weapons for raw materials with African, Arab, and Asian partners. Countries under embargo have used natural resources — oil, minerals, diamonds — to acquire weapons on parallel markets. What the **Dzhashi case** suggests is therefore not an innovation: it is an adaptation of an old practice to the specific conditions of contemporary warfare and modern sanctions regimes.

What is new is the use of such a vital and symbolically charged resource as Ukrainian grain — grain produced by a nation fighting for its survival — as currency to finance the weapons striking that same nation. There is a particular violence in this circularity, a cynicism that merits specific attention in the ongoing judicial and diplomatic investigations. The moral character of the exchange is not neutral. It is the deliberate weaponization of food against the people who grew it.

### Toward international accountability for economic war crimes

Ukrainian and international legal experts have begun examining how economic infractions linked to war — sanctions circumvention, resource diversion, indirect financing of war crimes — might be prosecuted before international bodies. The **International Criminal Court** deals with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but economic crimes supporting a war of aggression do not easily fit within its current jurisdiction.

Nonetheless, interesting precedents exist. Jurisprudence on corporate responsibility for financing armed conflicts has developed from the **Nuremberg tribunals** through cases involving companies supplying raw materials to genocidal regimes. The Ukrainian case could contribute to the evolution of this law, particularly if the evidence assembled by the **SBU** is robust enough to justify prosecutions. The documentation being built now will matter later — and that later may come sooner than anyone expects.

*The question of criminal accountability for economic actors who facilitate a war of aggression is one of the great open legal questions of the 21st century. Ukraine, through its rigorous investigations into cases like Dzhashi's, is building the jurisprudence that may one day hold these actors responsible. This is not vengeance — it is deferred justice. And it is real.*

## Conclusion: a case that crystallizes the stakes of economic warfare

### Beyond the Dzhashi case: a system that must be reformed

The case of Ukrainian grain exchanged for Iranian drones is symptomatic of a systemic problem the **West** cannot ignore. Sanctions work partially. Circumvention networks also work. And as long as third-party countries find it economically profitable to serve as intermediaries in these illicit flows, sanctions will remain imperfect tools. The answer is not to abandon sanctions — it is to strengthen them, broaden their application perimeter, and more vigorously sanction third-party facilitators who currently face negligible consequences.

The **European Union** adopted measures in **2024** to combat sanctions circumvention via third countries. The **United States** has threatened secondary sanctions against financial institutions facilitating transactions with sanctioned Russian entities. These measures represent progress. But the **Dzhashi case** shows they are not yet sufficient to close the gaps through which hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain can flow toward the manufacture of weapons killing Ukrainian civilians.

### Collective responsibility in the face of economic warfare

The economic war against **Russia** is a long war. It requires permanent vigilance, considerable resources for sanctions monitoring and enforcement, and international cooperation that is not always forthcoming. It also requires the willingness to sanction trading partners that facilitate circumvention — even when that carries economic costs for the countries making those decisions. That is precisely where political will tends to fail.

*The economic war against Russia is harder than the military war. It has no visible front lines, no victories to celebrate, no clearly identified heroes. It demands patience, rigor, and the willingness to pay a short-term economic cost for a long-term strategic benefit. That is by definition what democracies do worst. It is also what the situation demands — and what Ukraine's survival requires.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Ukrainska Pravda — Grain for Shahed drones: law enforcement investigates shipments of Ukrainian grain to Iran — June 23, 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/23/8040731/)

### Secondary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — Ukraine's economy posted its sharpest contraction since the wartime recovery began — June 23, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/23/ukraine-economy-contraction-june-2026/)

- [Kyiv Independent — General Staff: Russia has lost 1,395,790 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022 — June 24, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/general-staff-russia-has-lost-1-395-790-troops-in-ukraine-since-feb-24-2022/)

- [United24 Media — Ukraine Launches Record Wave of Strikes on Russia's Defense Industry in June — June 28, 2026](https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-launches-record-wave-of-strikes-on-russias-defense-industry-in-june-20234)

- [Kyiv Post — Fuel Shortages: A Turning Point in Russia's War? — June 26, 2026](https://www.kyivpost.com/post/79007)

- [Al Jazeera — As Ukraine seizes first chance to win, war horrors come home to Russia — June 25, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/25/as-ukraine-seizes-first-chance-to-win-war-horrors-come-home-to-russia)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/reportage-grain-ukrainien-contre-drones-shahed-le-reseau-qui-contourne-les-sanct