Lithuania to ask Ukraine to help control exports of dual-use goods - PM

VILNIUS - As Lithuania's previous government banned the export of dual-purpose goods to third countries, except for 10 countries, from January, Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas calls the restrictions "stupid". However, he intends to work with Ukraine to find out whether Lithuanian products are being used by Russia on the frontline.

"We will write to the responsible Ukrainian security authorities so that if any Lithuanian-made components are found on the front, they will provide us with that information and real decisions can be made on a real export ban," Paluckas said on Monday after a meeting with the president.

According to the prime minister, the former government's decision, made in December, is illogical and irrational, and does not step up the control of the existing international sanctions against Russia.

"It neither bans something, nor allows something. It is simply a ban on the mode of transport, that it cannot be done by plane, but it can be done by truck," Paluckas said. "We are talking about correcting these stupid things and shifting the responsibility to the exporter."

For his part, Vidmantas Janulevicius, president of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists, says that the vast majority of Lithuania's exports to third countries are re-exports, not exports of Lithuanian goods.

"If we are already a border state, it is not our declared goods: it is Italian wine, German electronic things that go to third countries via Lithuania," he told the public radio LRT on Monday.

BNS reported earlier that the Economy and Innovation Ministry is proposing urgently easing the restrictions approved by the Simonyte government. As of January 1, the export restrictions apply to all third countries except the US, Japan, the UK, South Korea, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Iceland.

Ex-Economy and Innovation Minister Ausrine Armonaite said at the time that the list had been updated on the basis of data from the country's services, showing that some of the goods and technologies being shipped to third countries via Lithuania were being used in Russia's war against Ukraine.