By B4Ukraine Executive Director Nezir Sinani.
This article originally appeared in Business Post
Ireland has spent four years standing firmly with Ukraine. Yet every month, ships still leave an Irish refinery on the Shannon Estuary carrying alumina — a raw material Russia uses to produce aluminium that is later used to manufacture weapons components.
The EU has imposed sweeping restrictions on trade with Russia, including on aluminium. But alumina can still legally be exported there. That distinction may make economic sense for Ireland, but it also leaves open a loophole that Russia exploits to sustain its war against Ukraine.
The solution should not be framed as a choice between supporting Ukraine and protecting the Irish economy. The right policy should achieve both: close the Russian loophole while securing the long-term future of a strategically important European refinery.
Between April 2024 and March 2025, Aughinish Alumina in County Limerick shipped more than 540,000 tonnes of alumina, worth nearly $308 million, to Russian recipients linked to Rusal, Russia’s largest aluminium producer and the owner of the Aughinish refinery, according to trade data compiled by the Economic Security Council of Ukraine.
What happens downstream is also well documented. Russian aluminium produced within this industrial network reaches companies supplying the country’s military-industrial complex. Among them is the Arzamas Instrument-Making Plant, a manufacturer of gyroscopic equipment used in weapons systems, including the Kh-101 cruise missile, one of the weapons Russia has repeatedly used against Ukrainian cities.
That does not mean anyone can trace a particular tonne loaded in Limerick into a particular Russian missile. The relevant question is simpler: should Europe continue supplying an essential industrial input into a Russian production system whose customers include sanctioned weapons manufacturers?
The problem is that Russia continues to be one of Aughinish’s dominant export markets. The company’s figures indicate that more than four in ten tonnes of its 2025 production went to Russia. Therefore, four years of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine have failed to bring any meaningful diversification of Aughinish’s export markets
The argument against sanctions is familiar. Aughinish is a major employer in Ireland’s midwest and an important part of Europe’s aluminium supply chain. Taoiseach Micheál Martin has rightly argued that sanctions should damage Russia rather than Europe itself.
But this is precisely why Ireland should act now rather than wait for events to force its hand. If Aughinish has become so dependent on Russia that losing that market threatens the refinery’s survival, that dependence is itself a strategic vulnerability. If it has not, then the challenge is to redirect production toward European and other international customers.
Either way, indefinitely preserving a Russian market cannot be a credible European industrial strategy. There is a precedent.
Australia banned exports of alumina, bauxite and related products to Russia in March 2022, less than a month after the full-scale invasion. It did so despite Russia relying on Australia for roughly one-fifth of its alumina needs and despite Rusal holding a 20 per cent stake in a major Australian refinery.
More than four years later, the European Union still permits a trade that Australia concluded within weeks was incompatible with sanctions designed to constrain Russia’s industrial capacity. Ireland is now unusually well placed to change that as it holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The Presidency does not allow Ireland to dictate sanctions policy: agreement ultimately requires Europe’s institutions and member states to act together. But it gives Ireland substantial influence over the Council agenda, the ability to broker agreement and a platform from which to turn growing political pressure into European action.
The solution is straightforward: the EU should add alumina to the goods restricted under its Russia sanctions regime, accompanied by strong anti-circumvention provisions to prevent exports simply being rerouted through third countries. But sanctions should be accompanied by industrial policy.
Ireland and the European Commission should work with Aughinish, its workers and European aluminium producers on a transition plan that redirects production toward European and other global markets. That would protect the refinery and the jobs that depend on it more effectively than preserving reliance on a Russian customer that future sanctions could remove with little warning.
Every Council Presidency arrives promising leadership. Ireland’s programme speaks of European security, values and competitiveness. Few decisions could bring those three priorities together more clearly.
A loophole in Europe’s sanctions regime runs through Irish territory. Ireland now has six months in the chair, and a rare opportunity to help close it.