Customs data: London-based Mykines shipped ~$1.2B of chips, servers, and other electronics into Russia, at least $982M of which are subject to export controls
including mobile phones, laptops, circuit boards and semiconductors — to Russia since February 2022. https://www.ft.com/... Richard Shearman / @dickshearman : Sanctions UK style: ‘Significant control’ is exercised by Vitali Poliakou, ‘a 53 yr old Ukrainian.... her public Instagram page lists her activities as IT professional and pole dancer’ The UK business that shipped $1.2bn of electronics to Russia https://www.ft.com/... Oliver Rivers / @maxrothbarth : Superb reporting. “Some of the customs records have errors — or may have been the subject of subterfuge. For example, there are six entries logging the import of paper. But the implied price of this paper is, in some cases, $500,000 a kilogramme.” https://twitter.com/... Mitchell Prothero / @mitchprothero : Now that's the Brexit spirit we've been waiting for! https://twitter.com/... Josh Spero / @joshspero : “there are six entries logging the import of paper. But the implied price of this paper is, in some cases, $500,000 a kilogramme. The purported paper is also listed as having been made by Huawei and New H3C Technologies” https://www.ft.com/... Ann Pettifor / @annpettifor : A superb piece of investigative journalism... https://www.ft.com/... Ed Siddons / @edwardsiddons : A terraced house in Enfield oversaw the export of $1.2bn of electronics to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine last year. Very normal country with very good oversight of company registrations and export controls. https://www.ft.com/... Alexander von Witzleben / @alexwitzleben : The UK business that shipped $1.2bn of electronics to Russia. #Mykines had been active in Russia prior to the invasion, but the records imply its business with the country suddenly took off after the onset of the war https://www.ft.com/... #sanctions #VladimirPutin Adam Bates / @adamdbates : Fantastic @FT reporting UK business that shipped $1.2bn of electronics to Russia Registered to house in Enfield Until last August the controlling owner was a “34 yr old Ukrainian ... whose instagram a/c says she is an IT professional and pole dancer” https://www.ft.com/... Graham Barrow / @greybrow53 : This is an @ft story about Mykines Corporation LLP. Below are screen grabs of a/c filed by Mykines and Nippon Klick LLP who have the same current and ex owners. Look at the labels Same date, consecutive scan numbers They arrived in the same envelope https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands on top of a year of reporting on how Russia keeps acquiring controlled Western technology: Bloomberg's sources flagged transshipment of advanced chips through Turkey and the UAE weeks before the invasion anniversary, and FT later traced covert pipelines for EU-controlled dual-use microchips. The Mykines story shifts the lens from third-country relay points to the UK itself — a London-registered LLP, run from a terraced house in Enfield, appears in customs records as a direct exporter.
What makes the filing unusual is scale and opacity together: roughly $1.2B in chips, servers, laptops and phones since February 2022, with at least $982M subject to export controls, 'significant control' recorded under Vitali Poliakou, and sister entity Nippon Klick LLP sharing the same current and former owners per filings. The customs entries themselves carry errors or possible subterfuge, which cuts both ways for enforcement.
First-order effects
- UK export-control authorities now face a named domestic case: $982M of controlled goods leaving from a Companies House registration that looks nothing like an exporter of that scale, putting beneficial-ownership checks on LLPs like Mykines and Nippon Klick directly in scope.
Second-order effects
- As one direct-export route draws scrutiny, procurement shifts further into the workarounds already documented by reporters — the specialized e-commerce sites and Chinese middlemen moving Cisco gear, and the Gulf transshipment lanes — raising costs for Russian buyers without cutting supply.
Third-order effects
- Enforcement migrates from policing front-line shippers toward forensic use of customs and corporate-registry data, the same pattern behind the NCA's later uncovering of a multibillion-dollar crypto-based sanctions-evasion scheme — pushing regulators toward mandatory transparency over who really controls UK-registered trading firms.
The trend: Russia's acquisition of controlled Western tech is industrializing through small UK-registered intermediary firms, with enforcement increasingly driven by customs-data forensics rather than border checks.