Ukraine Archives - SIRAJ

From the Steppes of Donbas to the Deserts of Syria

Radwan Awad — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:07:15 +0000

After more than 13 years of civil war, the Assad regime collapsed in a matter of weeks in December 2024. With few foreseeing the swiftness of the regime’s demise, Russian interests in the region were dealt a resounding blow, following nearly a decade of committed involvement. As arguably the Russian ally which enjoyed the most military backing, the old Syria under Assad proved to be somewhat of a testing ground for Russian military expertise – perhaps the most important element of its relations with friendly states in the ‘global south’.

Of particular interest are the efforts Russia was making to enhance the capabilities of Assad’s army in the 12 months before the regime’s collapse. Beginning in late 2023, regime propaganda websites and social media accounts began publishing photos and videos of Russian instructors training Syrian soldiers in the use of first-person view (FPV) drones – which could be considered the biggest battlefield innovation of the past decade, brought to light by the invasion of Ukraine.

This report delves into the implications of these training programs, shedding light on how Russia is leveraging the military experience it is gaining in its war on Ukraine as a means to further its influence abroad.

Introduction

Following its full-scale intervention in Syria in 2015, Russia was arguably the most steadfast and decisive ally of the Assad regime. Backed by overwhelming Russian airpower, the Syrian state managed to fairly quickly claw back territory throughout the country. By the end of the following year, the Syrian state had full control over the city of Aleppo, rebel enclaves scattered throughout the country fell one by one, and antiregime groups were largely confined to Idlib Province until their breakout in winter 2024. All of the regime’s gains were accomplished at an enormous cost to civilians. Throughout the Russian intervention, a persistent criticism by international media, humanitarian organizations and Syrian civil society was that the Russian state was effectively aiding and abetting—if not outright committing—the Assad regime’s war crimes. Indiscriminate, or even positively terroristic, bombing runs by Syrian and Russian warplanes played a decisive role in the string of defeats suffered by Syrian revolutionaries between 2015 and 2019, which demoralized constituent populations and overwhelmed already stretched opposition resources. The rebels had no response to this tactic.

In the last 12 months of its involvement in Syria, the Russian state was engaged in further enhancing the capabilities of the Assad regime by imparting lessons learned by the Russian army in Ukraine. Of particular interest for the purposes of this report is the proliferation of FPV drones in Syria brought by Russian instructors to the bases of the Assad regime’s most trusted units.

One of these, the 25th Special Forces Division—formerly known as the Tiger Forces—has been accused of some of the worst atrocities of the war, including massacres of protesters in the early days of the conflict.

FPV stands for ‘first-person view’, a technology once used primarily for drone racing, aerial photography, and videography, which has now found its way to battlefields in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and beyond. The term ‘FPV’ refers to the method by which the drone pilot experiences the flight of the drone through a camera installed on it, which transmits a live video feed to a headset, monitor, or mobile device. This allows the pilot to see from the drone’s perspective at a relatively safe distance.

FPV drones represent a rapidly advancing technology that offers significant potential due to their affordability and lethality. They enable precise and targeted operations, making them a formidable tool for executing focused attacks on specific individuals or objectives.

The war in Ukraine precipitated an explosion in the development of FPV drone technology. First pioneered by Ukrainian army units several months into the war, the Russians quickly adapted and began establishing their own production lines. By December 2023, Ukrainian experts warned that Russia was producing six times as many of these drones as Ukraine – up to 300,000 monthly, with the capability to further scale up operations.These figures speak volumes about the efficacy of these weapons. Footage exists of fairly modern tanks being completely obliterated by wellplaced FPV hits. Lighter vehicles are yet more vulnerable. Even using an FPV drone to kill a single enemy soldier represents a more cost-effective use of munitions than conventional methods. The drones themselves are small, highly agile and fast, making them nearly impossible to shoot down with regular bullets. As such, they roam the battlefields of Ukraine with near impunity, coming to represent arguably the most feared weapon of the war.

Of particular concern is the mixture of accessibility and effectiveness provided by FPV drones, putting them within comfortable reach of terrorist organizations, individual assailants, and sanctioned regimes. The technology behind them is quite straightforward and can be assembled by hand in a matter of hours at a low cost. “It’s easy to legally obtain FPV drones for less than 750 euros each and convert them into kamikaze drones,” explains Julian Ropcke, a German military and security analyst speaking to Mohammed Bassiki. “All you need in addition is an RPG-7 warhead or any other type of explosive tied to the drone.”

With these considerations in mind, there were reasonable misgivings about the implications of this technology finding its way into the hands of the Assad regime. According to Ropcke, speaking in mid-2024, “the drones are being used as a terror weapon by the regime rather than strategically to defeat rebel forces. It seems that the regime is using these as a cheap alternative to artillery or mortars, and the threshold for their use is lower due to their ‘civilian’ and even ‘playful’ nature.”

According to Syrian humanitarian organizations, FPVs were used to target civilians – whether as perverse ‘practice’ for operators, or as a continuation of the Syrian state’s strategy of brutality.

This investigation, based on open-source intelligence (OSINT), analyzes the nature of FPV drone usage in Syria by the fallen Assad regime, the implications this had for the Syrian population, and the nature of Russian influence operations.

FPVs

Quadcopter drones, primarily Chinese- and Russian-designed, have been spotted in use by the Syrian Arab Army. The above pictures are likely to show Russian Gastello FPV quadcopters – reported to be in mass production in Russia since 2023.[1] The fourth image shows a screenshot of the drones being featured on Russian state media..

In the above left picture, the operator appears to be carrying a Chinese Mavic 3 drone. The picture to the right shows a drone with the text “MA3” visible.

Training and Deployment

During its involvement in Syria in from 2015-2024, the Russian military preferred to work with a handful of specific Syrian Arab Army units, selected for their loyalty to the Assad regime and their relative combat efficacy compared to regular units. These often became the first-in-line to receive new Russian-manufactured equipment. A similar trend can be observed in regard to Russian training and supply of FPV drones.

Some trainers wear Serbian flag patches. Serbian mercenaries have also been spotted fighting for the Russian military in Ukraine.

According to our analysis using OSINT techniques, three Syrian Arab Army units underwent training in FPV drones usage: the 5th and 7th mechanized divisions, and the 25th Special Mission Forces Division, the renamed “Tiger Forces”, formerly under the command of the notorious Suheil al-Hasan. Al-Hasan is currently the head of the Syrian special forces. Training is evidently not confined just to the deployment of FPV drones. Russian instructors are seen with electronic warfare equipment, and what appears to be a new Russian-developed anti-drone rifle, the Garpiya. Officers up to the rank of brigadier general are seen undergoing training.

Furthermore, based on analysis of images released by pro-regime Telegram and Twitter/X accounts, training appeared to be happening in at least two locations. One was at the 5th Mechanized Division’s headquarters in Izra, rural Daraa province. The second appeared to be in the town of Kom al-Wasiyah, by the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. This was identified again through OSINT analysis.

Image from pro-regime online account. Claims to be showing veterans of the “special military operation” (in Ukraine) training Syrian Army troops.

In the above image, one catches a glimpse of two signs bearing the Syrian flag. These appear to align with the below images, gleaned from the Kom al-Wasiyah municipality’s official Facebook account.

Further pictures were uploaded on the same account of Russian instructors on rooftops, giving further clues regarding their location.

In fact, the rooftop images appear to be of the village municipality building.

As mentioned earlier, the training also went beyond just the use of FPV drones. Some of the images posted by pro-Assad online accounts (see below) give rare glimpses of what could be a new Russian-made anti-drone rifle, the Garpiya. If this were the case, the Syrian Arab Army could have been among the first in the world to widely field this type of anti-drone weapon, reflecting the growing danger posed by FPV drones and other small remotely controlled weapons.

Garpiya anti-drone rifle.

According to a military source in the Syrian opposition, during 2024, “kamikaze drones are launched by Russian special forces from elevated areas along the frontlines in rural Idlib and Aleppo regions,” with “no observed presence of Syrian regime forces during the launches.” This is corroborated by a post by an official military account of the National Liberation Front, a faction of the Syrian anti-Assad rebels. According to the source, the kamikaze drones were guided by Russian observation drones and penetrated as far as 10 kilometers into what was then-rebel-held territory.

Analysis of non-public military footage of the Syrian opposition forces shows the bulk of pro-Assad FPV launch sites being clustered around the localities of Dana, Saraqib and Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib Province, as well as Base 46, a fortified position in the Aleppo countryside that was the site of a major battle in 2012. According to Nawar Shaban, a researcher with the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, there is evidence that pro-Assad forces were actively developing the drones, such as by installing larger batteries and thus improving range.

Impact on Civilians and Further Implications

The brief period in which FPV drone technology was in the hands of the brutal Syrian Arab Army unfortunately led to Syrian civilians being terrorized by this new weapon. As we can see from the patterns of attacks described by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, pro-Assad forces were regularly targeting civilians with FPV drones – whether this was perverse “practice” or part of a broader strategy of terror directed at the civilian population, the effects remained the same. Dozens of civilians were targeted, maimed and killed by these devices, particularly at the start of 2024.

Beyond this, FPV drones gave the Assad regime significant tactical and strategic advantages. According to Dr Glenn Kolomeitz, an international law consultant and analyst and former Australian Army legal officer, these weapons are particularly effective in the hands of a faction with little regard for civilian casualties. “From a weaponeering and targetting perspective, FPV drones give commanders greater options and…greater flexibility and accuracy in the battlespace. This is especially the case when collateral damage does not feature prominently in a commander’s targeting decision making and when collateral damage estimates are not an element of the targeting process, both of which appear to be the case with pro-Assad forces.”

Furthermore, according to Dr Kolomeitz, the advantages stretch beyond the battlefield, thanks to what he calls the “Terminator Effect”. “This is the effect on the morale of opposition troops and in the creation of a state of panic and terror in the civilian population, of lethal machines in the nature of loitering munitions operated from a distance,” Dr Kolomeitz told OSINT for Ukraine.

Recall the common tactical usage by pro-Assad forces of barrel bombs – essentially barrels filled with explosives that would be dropped out of helicopters into densely populated areas, with practically no regard to accuracy. Pro-Assad forces consistently demonstrated their reliance on such terror tactics to subdue the civilian population into submission. FPV drones gave them a new vector with which to pursue this strategy, with even less risk for the operators, particularly as engineers devised ways to increase the drones’ range and lethality.

On an even broader scale, the adoption of FPV drone technology could have also been a major cost-cutting measure for the heavily sanctioned Assad regime. “Without reducing the humanitarian impact of these weapons to a cheap quote, these FPV drones deliver Syrian government forces ‘more bang for their buck’,” explains Dr Kolomeitz. “These drones…are far cheaper to make and operate than conventional indirect fire weapons systems…much of the technology, in terms of availability, is commercial off-the-shelf and multi-use.” This also would have made it significantly easier for the Assad regime to manufacture FPV drones, which they had evidently been doing. Though the worst did not come to pass, even if the international community were to attempt to restrict another similarly rogue state’s ability to access the components needed to manufacture the drones, according to Dr Kolomeitz, “rapid advances in and improvements in the largely civilian and multi-use technology makes identifying and subjecting equipment to sanctions difficult.” That Russia and Iran are both making strides in homegrown manufacturing of FPV drones made it all the easier for rogue states’ to access the critical components for building drones.

Thankfully, the worst-case scenario did not come to pass. Despite several dozens of recorded FPV drone attacks on civilians in the year or so prior to the fall of the Assad regime, the rebel offensive of December 2024 decisively put an end to this threat. Rather ironically, a large part of the success of the rebel offensive was due to their own astute use of FPV drones – likely involving Ukrainian trainers and even operators. Another armed Syrian faction, the Kurdish-dominated SDF, has also recently been using FPV drones in its fight against Turkish-backed militias.

However, the Russian involvement in training FPV pilots in the Syrian army does reflect the growing influence the Russian state is currently exerting, fueled by the experience it has acquired in its invasion of Ukraine. According to Dr Kolomeitz, Syria had become a “laboratory for drones,” allowing Russia to “test the ability of a client state to manufacture low-cost FPV drones locally using commercial technology, and test the ability to get around sanctions regimes.” With Russia and several of its allied states currently operating under sanctioned regimes, this was an invaluable opportunity for the Russian state to acquire realtime experience, both for its own ability to circumvent sanctions, and for its ability to support allied states and exert its influence. In doing so, Dr Kolomeitz says that “Russia has bought a seat at the table of Middle Eastern influence”.

This experience also helped Russia develop its own capabilities. For decades, the Russian military has been gradually evolving from its Soviet roots to develop more contemporary capabilities suited to today’s geopolitical and military climate. A major reflection of this shift is Russia’s focus on developing relatively small-scale expeditionary capabilities – as seen in its 2014 invasion of Ukraine, its intervention in Syria, and its involvement in numerous African conflicts. As such, training pro-Assad forces in FPV drone usage is “consistent with Russia’s application of its new generation warfare construct”, which Dr Kolomeitz explains possesses “an increasingly technological character”.

This can go a long way in offsetting the Russian state’s ailing weapons export industry. “If its FPV drone training role in Syria is anything to go by, it is not a long stretch to say that the sale of arms as a lever of influence is steadily being replaced by the sale of FPV drone expertise as a very niche lever of influence,” explains Dr Kolomeitz.

As such, the recent proliferation of FPV drone technology within pro-Assad forces carries significant implications beyond the battlefields of Syria. Through its experiences in Ukraine, the Russian military now has a level of expertise in modern large-scale combat far beyond virtually any other state in the world, barring Ukraine. This gives Russia the ability to project influence in a manner in which its rivals cannot, at least not to the same ability. Of particular significance in this is the welfare of civilians in Russia’s area of influence. Russian troops and their allies have developed a deserved reputation for their harm to civilians – whether in Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic, or the Sahel states, death stalks civilians wherever the Russian military and its proxies are involved. Through sharing its technological expertise, the Russian state makes it easier for its questionable allies to accomplish their agendas. While Russian ambitions in Syria were dealt a major blow in December 2024, Moscow retains the capability to exert influence through its military expertise.

FPV drones certainly represent a new frontier in warfare, and unfortunately, Russia is at the cutting edge of this frontier. The onus is on everyone else to catch up.

The Arabic version of this investigation can be found on Daraj.media.

The post From the Steppes of Donbas to the Deserts of Syria appeared first on SIRAJ.

A ‘Bloody’ Trade: Inside the Murky Supply Chain Bringing Syrian Phosphates Into Europe

sadmin — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 16:11:31 +0000

On a warm May evening last year, a Comoros-flagged cargo ship named the Kubrosli-y disappeared from ship tracking systems off the coast of Turkey. A full week later, it reappeared near Cyprus before continuing on to dock in Ukraine.

Although tracking data offers no sign of the Kubrosli-y’s whereabouts during that week, photos posted on Facebook by a Syrian government agency two days before its reappearance provide clues to why its crew might have been keen to disguise their location.

One of the images shows Syrian oil and minerals minister Bassam Toumeh at the Mediterranean port of Tartus. Another shows the Kubrosli-y docked at one of two berths at the port that were custom-built to load phosphate, a prized mineral that has been a major economic lifeline for the sanctioned regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria has some of the largest known reserves of the increasingly sought-after fertilizer ingredient. The phosphate industry collapsed when Islamic State militants seized the country’s largest mines in 2015, but production has revived since government forces recaptured them the following year, attracting buyers even from countries opposed to Assad’s regime.

The journey of the Kubrosli-y, and the techniques it deployed, offer a glimpse into the murky supply chain of Syrian phosphates as they make their way from regions torn apart by civil war to farmers across Europe. Every step of the way, the trade enriches the Syrian state, war profiteers, and people with deep ties to Russia’s elite.

Despite the risks of sanctions violations, Serbia, Ukraine, and four European Union states have imported over $80 million worth of Syrian phosphates since 2019, according to a new investigation by OCCRP member centers in seven countries, in partnership with Lighthouse Reports and Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ).

The United States has imposed sanctions on both the Syrian government and the Russian company that appears to control much of Syria’s phosphate exports, Stroytransgaz. The EU has also sanctioned two key players: Syria’s Toumeh and Stroytransgaz’s owner, Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire tycoon and close ally of the Kremlin. But neither the U.S. nor the EU specifically prohibit the purchase of Syrian phosphates.

Experts say companies still run the risk of violating sanctions even if the phosphates trade is technically legal. A 2018 report by Politico that Greece was buying Syrian phosphates raised hackles in the European Parliament, and imports stopped soon after.

Even Stroytransgaz has tried to distance itself from the industry, insisting that it has no connection to two similarly named companies that dominate the trade today. But OCCRP and its partners found evidence of several links between Stroytransgaz and these firms.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has also led to increased pressure for European companies to cut ties to sanctioned Russian figures, such as Timchenko.

“Syrian phosphates are very bloody, not only because of the conflict in Syria but also what is happening in Ukraine,” said Glen Kurokawa, a phosphate analyst at commodity research group CRU. “Syria has to sell at a political discount because its goods are so toxic to handle.”

Asked about the imports, the EU Commission said it was up to individual countries to decide whether Syrian phosphate imports break sanctions. Authorities in Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Serbia confirmed they regard the trade as legal. Italian authorities did not reply to requests for comment.

Karam Shaar, a Syrian economist, said the trade shows how easily sanctions can be circumvented by opaque supply chains or by channeling funds and goods through the unknown subsidiaries of targeted companies.

“Of course exporting phosphates to Europe is a violation of sanctions,” he said. “But most of the countries don’t understand the structure of the organizations they have sanctioned.”

In the case of the Kubrosli-y, in the space of just three weeks it had set out from Istanbul, slipped in and out of Syria and sailed back through the Bosphorus to Nika Tera port in Ukraine, owned by a sanctioned oligarch.

“The ship owner doesn’t want anyone to know that his ship is coming from an economically sanctioned country like Syria,” said a Syrian ship captain from Tartous, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Sierra Leone-flagged Daytona Prime disappeared from AIS systems south of Cyprus while headed in Syria’s direction on Jan. 20, 2019. Satellite images show the ship docked in Tartous two weeks later, where port documents reveal it visited the phosphates berths the following day.

The ship appeared again on AIS south of Cyprus before reaching Romania’s Constanta port on the Black Sea on February 16, the same day that Romanian customs records show a cargo of Syrian phosphates were imported.

Tartous port took most of its recent records offline in June 2020, but more recent phosphate shipments could be identified using open-source and satellite images.

A Honduran-flagged cargo ship called the Sea Navigator disappeared from AIS off the coast of Cyprus on January 4, 2022, and then reappeared heading north before reaching Romania’s Constanta port on January 21. During this time, it appeared in the background of a selfie taken by a worker in the Tartous phosphates berth which was posted to social media.

The International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency that regulates global shipping, requires ships to broadcast AIS positions at all times, so ships with blackouts like these are problematic. That, in combination with the threat of sanctions and bad publicity, leaves European importers of Syrian phosphates working with ship owners on the legal fringes of the industry.

One of these is Aminos Maritime Ltd, which owns the Kubrosli-y, the ship that reporters noticed turning off its tracker in May last year before delivering phosphates to Ukraine. The ship has also made deliveries of Syrian phosphates to Romania and Greece. Aminos did not reply to a request for comment.

Another ship, the Prince Mouhammad, is owned by a Lebanon-based company whose largest shareholder is owned by relatives of Jihad al-Arab, a contractor close to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Last year, Arab was sanctioned by the U.S. for corruption. He did not respond to a request for comment either.

Ibrahim Olabi, a Syrian legal expert who monitors sanctions evasion, said the methods used to dodge sanctions in Syria would likely help Russian companies avoid new sanctions imposed by the European Union and United States over the Ukraine war.

“The Syrian phosphates trade shows why the EU sanctions system is not fit for purpose,” he said. “Sanctions evasion works and it’s not even that difficult.”

The industry’s dubious legality has also given rise to a complex network of proxies and middlemen.

‘Blood Money’

On a busy shopping street in London’s upmarket Kensington neighborhood, a small office above a secondhand clothing store is listed as the address of a British company called Resalper Trading Ltd.

The company sold $450,000 worth of Syrian phosphates to Ukrainian company Prime Organics in August 2020 — the country’s top importer of Syrian phosphates over the past two years — according to Ukrainian customs records. But Resalper Trading reported no financial activities in the year ending in May 2020, and only around $530 in assets that month, according to its most recent filings.

The office in Kensington belongs to formation agents Company Wizard and Quick File. When OCCRP contacted the 29-year-old Ukrainian who founded Resalper Trading in 2019, Ruslan Turkovskyi, he declined to comment.

Ukraine’s imports of Syrian phosphates ballooned from $3 million worth in 2018 to $15 million last year, despite Ukrainian sanctions imposed on Stroytransgaz and Timchenko. Most of those that arrive by sea enter through the Nika Tera port, owned by the sanctioned pro-Moscow oligarch Dmitry Firtash.

Sanctions expert Irene Kenyon, director of risk intelligence at the consultancy FiveBy Solutions, said using shell companies is a common strategy to disguise the fact that sanctioned entities or individuals were benefiting from a trade.

“Even though you might be legally in the right, you’re also giving blood money to a sanctioned human-rights violating regime and a sanctioned Russian oligarch,” she said.

Europe Quietly Resumed Syrian Phosphate Imports

Serbia and Ukraine are Europe’s top buyers of Syrian phosphates, while several EU states have also resumed imports.

Ukraine’s imports halted after the Russian invasion in February, but the country is far from the only buyer of Syrian phosphates.

In Serbia — Europe’s top buyer of Syrian phosphates in recent years — one importer was a former beauty company called Yufofarm. A Serbian business registry shows the company imported $26.9 million worth of products from Syria in 2021, though it did not specify what they were. Yufofarm declined to comment.

Yufofarm is owned by the business partner of Stanko Popovic, whose agriculture and fertilizer company, Elixir Group bought the Syrian phosphates Yufofarm imported. Elixir Group is the exclusive supplier of phosphoric acid — used to make fertilizers and animal feed — for the local operations of a major French conglomerate called Groupe Roullier.

“If the person you’re buying cargo from isn’t under sanctions then you’re further removed and aren’t necessarily busting sanctions yourself,” a maritime lawyer told OCCRP, speaking anonymously as they were not authorized to talk to the press. “This is the trade version of international money laundering.”

A spokesperson for the French company said it did “not use Syrian phosphate” and strictly complied with all sanctions.

Popovic acknowledged buying Syrian phosphates, which he had done since the 1970s, but told reporters that all his business transactions were legal. “We do not cooperate with any company in Syria on the basis of phosphate imports, or on any other basis,” he said.

Although Greece appeared to have stopped importing Syrian phosphates after the 2018 Politico report, at least four other EU member states — Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, and Poland — quietly resumed imports, OCCRP and its partners found. EU and UN trade data show that Italy started importing in 2020, Bulgaria in 2021, and Spain and Poland earlier this year.

Many of the EU’s imports of Syrian phosphates entered the bloc through Romania. Most of them were handled by two Middle Eastern companies, UAE-registered Blue Gulf Trading and Lebanon-registered Medsea Trading, both of which are owned by Lebanese businessman Afif Nazih Auf. He did not respond to requests for comment.

In Italy, Syrian phosphates are imported by Puccioni Spa, an established Italian fertilizer company. The company confirmed the purchases, but said it dealt with Syrian authorities through a broker, and that it did not work with Stroytransgaz.

In Bulgaria, Syrian phosphates are imported by a small Bulgarian company called Fertix EOOD, which was founded in 2017. Fertix’s managing director, Radostin Radev, has deep connections in Bulgaria’s agriculture industry, after starting his career at Agropolychim, one of the biggest fertilizer producers in the Balkans.

Radev said he had sold some of the Syrian phosphates to EuroChem Agro Bulgaria, a subsidiary of Eurochem Group AG, which is connected to Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. Melnichenko, who was sanctioned by the EU and the U.K. for supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine, recently withdrew from the company’s board.

For now, the trade in Syrian phosphates appears to be growing in spite of the many political complexities. Sergiy Moskalenko, director of Dnipro Mineral Fertilizer Plant, a Ukrainian firm that uses Syrian phosphates, told OCCRP that for them the purchases were a practical matter.

“Look, we need to eat,” he said. “In order to eat properly we need to supply the soil with fertilizers and to do this we must purchase the raw materials. To buy them, we unfortunately turn to…” He paused. “We take whatever phosphates are offered to us.”

Eva Constantaras (Lighthouse Reports), Hala Naserddine, (Daraj), Adam Chamseddine (Al Jadeed TV), Hervé Chambonniere (Le Telegramme), Ahmad Haj Hamdo, Ayman Makieh and Ahmad Obaid (SIRAJ) contributed reporting.

The post A ‘Bloody’ Trade: Inside the Murky Supply Chain Bringing Syrian Phosphates Into Europe appeared first on SIRAJ.