Economy Minister says Lithuania has no tools to limit trade of Vičiūnai products

The economy minister says Lithuania has exhausted all the means at its disposal to restrict the entry of European goods into Russia amid renewed public debate on the continued operations of the Vičiūnai Group in Russia.

“As a country, we have used the instruments we had. For example, our ministry has restricted the entry of technology into Central Asian countries, we have restricted the export of dual-use goods through our country,” Minister of the Economy and Innovation Aušrinė Armonaitė told the LRT public radio on Monday.

“Food is not a commodity that we can limit in this way or a commodity that the European Union is currently sanctioning,” she said.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency announced on Thursday it added Vičiūnai Group, producer of frozen and chilled food products, to a list of international war sponsors as the Lithuania-based company has not ceased its operations in Russia.

In response to the news, politicians have called for the company’s products to be removed from supermarket shelves, but the latter have avoided giving specific answers, saying they are not legally obliged to restrict trade. Lidl has been the only one to report plans to label the products additionally.

Armonaitė suggested that, in the absence of legal options, buyers themselves could choose not to buy Vičiūnai products.

“Each customer can buy less and influence the range of products in this way,” the minister said.

“The second thing, and apparently the supermarkets bear this in mind, is that there are many goods that are still sold in Russia by multinational corporations. (&) We should probably look at that corporation in the country and try to consume as little of its products as possible,” she said.

After Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Šarūnas Matijošaitis, head of the Lithuanian group of companies, announced the company’s withdrawal from the Russian market within 3-4 months. However, it turned out that Vičiūnai is not slowing down its activities in Russia, as the company has not sold its plant in Sovetsk in the Kaliningrad region.

Kaunas Mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis, one of the owners of the Vičiūnai Group, has repeatedly said that the company is gradually withdrawing from the Russian market and is looking for a buyer for the plant.