The white sandy beaches, turquoise waters, and exclusive resorts of this South Asian archipelago attract millions of tourists every year. However, behind this postcard-perfect scene, a new business has quietly emerged: a network of companies helping Russia circumvent international sanctions.
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Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of restricted goods or goods destined for sanctioned companies have changed hands at the airport, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with Western officials. Some of these products have both civilian and military uses. The airport’s cargo holds are frequently filled with aircraft spare parts and electronic components, as well as other regulated goods, according to the documents and official sources.
The volume of goods passing through the Maldives is relatively small compared to Russia’s main routes for evading sanctions — such as China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, which together represent about $15 billion annually in restricted Russian imports —. Nevertheless, the traffic through the Maldives, previously unreported in the press, reveals the extent of Russia’s strategy to bypass Western restrictions, turning even small and unexpected corners of the planet into supply routes.
Over more than four years of war, Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to find cracks in the sanctions regime, forcing Western officials to play cat and mouse in their attempts to stop the flow of goods sustaining the war effort and the Russian economy.
The documentation analyzed by the Journal — air waybills, cargo manifests, and emails between logistics companies — illustrates how this mechanism operates in the Maldives.
Every morning, a commercial Aeroflot flight, Russia’s main airline, lands at Malé airport. There, local intermediaries coordinated with logistics companies linked to Russia handle customs clearance of products coming from the United States, Europe, and China. Then, the goods are loaded onto Aeroflot flights, which take off about two hours later back to Moscow with the shipments.
Once in Russia, the products are distributed, in some cases, to sanctioned entities. Among them is S7 Airlines, Russia’s largest domestic airline, and its maintenance subsidiaries, which have faced serious difficulties obtaining spare parts for their aging aircraft fleet.
“This shows the existence of effective channels far from the usual suspects,” said Pavlo Shkurenko, a sanctions researcher at the Kyiv School of Economics Institute.
The Maldivian government and the state company managing the airport, Maldives Airports Company, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Maldives archipelago consists of more than a thousand islands, many of which host a single hotel resort. More than two million tourists visit the islands annually, captivated by clear waters where they can observe turtles, manta rays, and whale sharks. Malé, by contrast, seems like another world: it is one of the most densely populated cities on the planet, with narrow streets bustling with constant motorcycle and moped traffic.
Part of Russia’s success in channeling goods through the Maldives lies in its economic ties with the island nation. Russian tourists are the second largest nationality after Chinese citizens. Therefore, a diplomatic crisis with Moscow would threaten the Maldives’ economy, which is still recovering from the tourism sector’s downturn during the pandemic.
Currently, the Maldivian government not only earns revenue through tourism taxes but also thanks to commercial growth. Maldives Airports Company recorded record profits in 2024, positioning itself as the country’s most profitable state-owned company. The entity collects commercial and cargo handling fees, as well as reselling fuel with a profit margin.
Certain supplies sent from Malé to Moscow are classified under sanctions as dual-use goods, meaning they can be used for both civilian and military purposes; for example, to supply the beleaguered Russian aviation industry.
Among the recorded shipments are microchips suitable for both civilian technology and sophisticated missile guidance systems, optical instruments needed in satellites intended to monitor enemy troops, and high-strength aerospace bolts and rivets, useful interchangeably for passenger planes, military fighters, or long-range rockets.
Official Maldivian customs statistics show an insignificant volume of direct exports to Russia between 2022 and 2025: barely $2,300 in tuna and $25 in informational brochures. However, Russian trade data collected by Import Genius, a U.S. research firm, shows that Russian imports from the Maldives — a nation with virtually no industrial base — soared to over $630 million in 2022 (the year the large-scale invasion began), compared to just seven million in 2021.
Russia imported $160 million in 2024, the latest full year available in Import Genius records. The firm’s research director, William George, indicated that these figures likely underestimate the real volume of bilateral trade, and noted that Russian authorities began censoring parts of this information in 2024 before completely blocking access in early 2025.
The United States and Europe imposed widespread sanctions on Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine to weaken its industrial base and isolate it from global trade. As part of these measures, they froze nearly $300 billion in Russian central bank assets and disconnected major financial institutions from the Swift messaging system. At the same time, a network of export controls cut Moscow’s access to advanced microchips, aerospace technology, and industrial machinery essential to sustain its domestic production and war effort.
Recently, Western officials’ efforts have focused on closing legal loopholes and penalizing evasion methods. Both Washington and the European Union increasingly target intermediaries in third countries, such as banking entities and logistics companies that facilitate the covert flow of Western supplies or the diversion of opaque oil revenues to Russia.
The Maldivian government is under growing pressure from the United States and Europe to shut down this route, according to official sources consulted. Local authorities are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it, according to a person familiar with the matter.
One factor complicating the situation is the shortage of staff at the Maldivian customs office, which results in minimal inspections of goods in transit, according to the same source. Generally, transit cargo is not subject to physical inspections; control is based almost exclusively on documentation.
Trade, far from slowing down, continues to rise. In July, the Maldives Airports Company announced a historic record for daily volume of goods in transit through the airport, reaching 126 tons of cargo in a single day. Aeroflot accounted for 12% of outgoing cargo transport during the first half of the year, according to the state broadcaster PSM News.
Documents reviewed by the Journal show that when the cargo initially lands, the air waybill lists the name of the exporting company and the alleged buyer. However, once in the Maldives, a network of opaque local companies — such as Freight Care and Go Investment — intervenes to alter shipping documents and move the goods directly across the tarmac, ensuring they never leave the airport premises nor are recorded as formal entries into the country.
The cargo is never classified as an import and undergoes minimal customs checks before being transferred from one plane to another, official sources confirmed. A new air waybill is then issued for the flight connecting Malé with Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. This document omits the name of the original selling company, according to the analyzed documentation and Western official sources.
For example, in May 2024, the German company Kraemer Mining sold pumps, batteries, V-belts, and other components valued at about €9,000 (around $10,400) to Peretsvo, a firm based in Kyrgyzstan. The goods first flew from Düsseldorf (Germany) to Malé on an Emirates plane. Freight Care, listed on the air waybill as the first contact, handled the documentation required to manage transit through the Maldivian airport, according to Western officials and the company itself.
Days later, the shipment was loaded onto an Aeroflot flight bound for Moscow. The airline issued a second air waybill with no reference to Kraemer Mining or the origin of the products. Instead, the new document designated Gruppa Kompaniy Tehno, a Russian importer located in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia’s industrial and economic center, as the recipient. Neither Gruppa Kompaniy Tehno nor Kraemer Mining responded to requests for comment.
The Journal located two different addresses for Freight Care: one listed on the air waybills and another in the country’s official commercial registry. Both pointed to adjacent office buildings in Malé, with the Aeroflot delegation located right between them. Upon visiting both premises, no trace of the company’s offices was found.
Hussain Waheed, Freight Care’s general manager, stated that the firm handled goods in transit in Malé destined for Russia but denied knowingly collaborating in shipping items intended for weapons manufacturing. “We do not support any war,” he said.
Meanwhile, the address attributed to Go Investment in the documents corresponded to a small electronics store. That same address was associated with multiple companies in the Maldives commercial registry. When contacted, the individual registered as general manager or board member of all those companies said he could not talk and hung up the phone, not responding to subsequent messages.
Content licensed from The Wall Street Journal. Translated from English by V. Santos.
