An Irish alumina refinery owned by Russian metals group Rusal is part of a supply chain that appears to end with Russian arms manufacturers involved in the war in Ukraine, according to new reporting by The Guardian that cites leaked records and public trade data.

Shipments of alumina from Aughinish Alumina, on Ireland’s Shannon estuary, to Russian smelters have risen sharply since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Citing data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, the newspaper said Ireland exported $243 million of alumina to Russia in 2022, with that figure rising 55 percent to $376 million in 2024. 

Aughinish is Ireland’s only producer of alumina and Europe’s largest producer of the material used to make aluminum, The Guardian said, citing a 2021 KPMG report.

The trade does not appear to violate current sanctions law, according to the report. Alumina is not subject to EU sanctions, even though the resulting aluminum has military applications. The report said Rusal’s transfers of alumina between its Irish and Russian facilities are legal, despite the fact that about a quarter of Rusal’s shares are indirectly owned by sanctioned Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.

But The Guardian said leaked data shared with iStories, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the Irish Times raises new questions about whether EU sanctions are sufficient to stop Russian defense companies from benefiting from materials originating inside the bloc.

According to the news outlet’s analysis of public records, nearly 500,000 tons of alumina, worth about $200 million, were exported from Aughinish to Rusal’s smelter in Krasnoyarsk in 2024. That volume accounted for around two-thirds of the alumina imported into Russia by the Siberian smelter that year and appears sufficient to support about 25 percent of its annual aluminum output of 1 million tons, the report said.

Aluminum produced at Krasnoyarsk was then sold through Rusal’s in-house trader, OK Rusal TD, to a third-party company, Aluminium Sales Company, or ASK. Leaked records cited by the newspaper suggest ASK paid Rusal about $300 million in 2024. The report also said ASK appears closely linked to Rusal, sharing addresses with Rusal branches in several Russian cities and apparently receiving loans from the group.

ASK’s customers include dozens of sanctioned arms companies, according to The Guardian. 

The newspaper said weapons manufacturers paid ASK $337 million for aluminum under Russian state defense contracts between February 2022 and April 2025. It identified the Sverdlov plant in Dzerzhinsk as ASK’s largest client in 2024, describing it as a producer of missile casings and explosives.  

The plant is Russia’s only significant manufacturer of the explosives RDX and HMX, citing a Ukrainian intelligence official and the Council of the European Union, which sanctioned the company in 2023, according to the report. 

Read more at The Guardian