German companies are apparently helping to build Mariupol

Enlarge image

Residents in Mariupol on April 12, 2022

Photo: SERGEI ILNITSKY / EPA

Hardly any place in Ukraine was so destroyed: Russian troops besieged Mariupol for weeks. When the last fighters in Mariupol surrendered on May 20, 2022, the city they had defended lay in ruins: Russia had shelled it for weeks, cut off the water and electricity supplies, and attacked homes and schools. Tens of thousands of people died in the bombing, and according to one estimate, 90 percent of all buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Shortly afterwards, construction work on the “new” Mariupol began. New construction sites can now be found in many places in the city, where new apartment blocks are being built from the ground. The reconstruction of Mariupol as a "Russian" city is an important propaganda project for Vladimir Putin.

Now research by the ARD magazine “Monitor” shows that the Russian president is apparently receiving help from several German companies. The logos of German manufacturers appear on videos and images of machines or windows. For example, the name Knauf on plaster bags. The Lower Franconian family company from Iphofen in the Kitzingen district is a global leader in gypsum production and has been doing good business in and with Russia for a long time. According to “Monitor research,” Knauf is not an isolated case. In the images and videos evaluated, lettering from other German companies appears on concrete blocks, such as WKB Systems GmbH from Münsterland in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Knauf's eye-catching Russia connection

Knauf writes “Monitor”

in a general statement that they condemn the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and follow all EU sanctions against Russia. In Russia they produce “exclusively for the Russian market”. However, Knauf left an extensive list of questions unanswered. WKB Systems GmbH did not comment when contacted by “Monitor”.

According to “Monitor,” Knauf employs around 4,000 people in Russia and continues to generate billions in sales there. Company patriarch Nikolaus Knauf was Russian honorary consul for more than two decades; in photos he smiles next to President Putin. He retained this post even after the annexation of Crimea. In 2018, he described the subsequent sanctions against Russia as “terrible”.

Nikolaus Knauf made his first contacts with Putin in the 1990s, when the future president was still working in the city administration of Saint Petersburg. And even after the start of the war in 2022, the connection between Knauf in Russia and the authorities apparently remained close: After the Russian partial mobilization began in autumn 2022, according to SPIEGEL research, the management of a Knauf factory outside Moscow supported the Russian authorities in deporting employees to enter military service (click here for the report).

Viktor Winkler, a specialist lawyer for sanctions law, considers Knauff's actions to be a possible violation of sanctions. "The idea that if I only operate a subsidiary in Russia in the Russian area, only on the Russian territories, that this would be irrelevant in terms of sanctions, so to speak, that is an absolute myth and couldn't be further from reality," said Winkler "Monitor". Even if building materials were not fundamentally covered by the EU's sanctions rules, the companies would have to be able to "effectively rule out that there is a military connection, any military connection, with what they deliver."

According to the Monitor, such “military relationships” arise from the client. An official Knauf dealer is publicly advertising that he has built a residential building project with Knauf building materials on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Photos of this construction site with Knauf sacks are available to “Monitor”.

The CDU member of the Bundestag and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag, Roderich Kiesewetter, condemns the participation of German companies in the construction work in Mariupol. They placed themselves in the service of a war that violated international law. "This is very obvious at Knauf because they are actually cementing Russian power in the occupied territories, including in Mariupol."

hey