Latvia and Lithuania are considering ending shipments of Russian grain through their ports after Moscow stepped up the transits in response to attacks by Ukraine on its Baltic ports, senior officials from the two countries told Reuters.
Reuters reported this week that Russia is diverting its grain exports to Baltic ports after Ukrainian drone attacks forced it to seek new routes. Russian exporters are mainly moving grain via Latvia, an EU and NATO member, analysts and traders said, with shipments expected to spike next month.
The Latvian Government will meet on Tuesday to discuss a full Russian grain export ban, a spokesperson for the Latvian prime minister said. Lithuania did not specify any particular move towards a ban, but said using its ports for grain exports was no longer acceptable.
"Russian grain exports using Lithuanian infrastructure is against our values," Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius told Reuters on Friday. Transit of grain between mainland Russia and its Kaliningrad exclave, through Lithuania, would not be affected, he added.
A ban by Latvia and Lithuania would cut off a key alternative for Russian grain exporters whose usual Black Sea and Azov Sea routes have been paralysed by Ukrainian drone strikes.
Russia exported 46.3 million tonnes of grain via ports in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea in the last exporting season - July 2025 to June 2026 - accounting for 90 per cent of total Russian seaborne grain exports, industry data shows.
Russian Baltic ports shipped only about one million tonnes, and the Baltic states, top supporters of Ukraine and critics of Russia, shipped another million tonnes.
Arkady Zlochevsky, head of the Russian Grain Union, a lobby group for farmers, estimated this week that Russian exports through the Baltic states could reach between five and six million tonnes this season or even 10 million tonnes if Estonian ports also become available.
Both Latvia and Lithuania on Friday said they suspect the Russian grain partly originates from the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.
"Ukrainian services have information about illegally exported Ukrainian grain from Russia, which is planned to be exported in large quantities through the Baltics in the near future," Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs said in a statement.
He has instructed Latvian authorities, "to create a mechanism to prevent the transit of grain illegally obtained in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine", in cooperation with Ukraine, the statement said. Moscow says the areas are now Russian territory.
Lithuania's state veterinary control agency told BNS news wire on Friday it took grain samples from grain listed as Russian in Klaipeda port on Thursday and sent them to a laboratory in France.
"The point is to see if the grain which is labelled as Russia is not really Ukrainian origin...it could be stolen," a spokesperson for the agency told BNS.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; editing by Philippa Fletcher)