Rustam Rakhimdzhanovich Muminov has already been sanctioned by the European Union, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. His companies kept making cotton pulp for Russia anyway. Now the EU is preparing to go after two of them directly.
A draft EU sanctions document seen by RFE/RL names Fargona Kimyo Zavodi LLC and Raw Materials Cellulose LLC, both controlled by Muminov, an Uzbek businessman who holds Russian and British citizenship. The draft says the two firms supply cotton pulp to Russian gunpowder plants in Kazan, Perm and Tambov. It says they “support Russia’s military and industrial complex by being involved in the supply of military technology and equipment.” The materials go into a range of military products, ammunition among them.
Russian buyers also named
The draft also lists two Russian buyers of Uzbek cotton products, Dmitry Malyuta and Denis Shishkin. It describes them as shareholders in LLC Bina Invest, through which they control companies that import cotton pulp from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for Russian gunpowder factories. Both also hold shares in LLC Aleksinskiye Kraski-Ural, which delivers goods to the same factories.
What the trade data show
Investigations by Vazhnyye Istorii, Vlast.Kz and OCCRP found that Muminov’s network controlled roughly 85 percent of Uzbekistan’s cotton cellulose exports to Russia. Those exports jumped after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022: around $5 million that year, then $8.7 million in the first nine months of 2023, nearly 70 times the 2021 level.
Customs records point to a change in labeling in 2024 and 2025. Some Uzbek suppliers began shipping cotton fiber under HS code 5601219000 rather than cotton cellulose. Exports under that heading were worth about $9.8 million in 2024, according to figures RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service cited. Experts say the switch may have let deliveries to Russian military facilities continue while partly sidestepping EU restrictions.
Earlier sanctions and restructuring
Ukraine put Muminov and several of his companies under sanctions in May 2025, under a decree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that stays in force for 10 years. The companies were Fargona Kimyo Zavodi LLC (Fergana Chemical Plant), Raw Materials Cellulose LLC and Mercury Renaissance. The United Kingdom added Muminov and the firms to its Russia sanctions list on December 18, 2025, freezing assets and imposing financial restrictions.
Ukrainian authorities say the companies were reshuffled after the May 2025 measures. Mercury Renaissance and Fargona Kimyo Zavodi were re-registered, and Raw Materials Cellulose stopped exporting to Russia at the end of 2024. Even so, the Council for Economic Security of Ukraine says Muminov remains closely tied to Russian military procurement.
His dominance in the pulp trade points to close ties with the state bodies that regulate it. Cotton and derived products with dual-use potential, such as cellulose and pulp, have long been tightly controlled by the Uzbek government, with security agencies overseeing a major source of national revenue.
Uzbek authorities have not publicly responded to the sanctions on Muminov and his companies. The EU’s 20th sanctions package is expected to be formally adopted by the end of February.
