In April 2025, all sixth cigaret lit in Ukraine came from an illegal source. 16.25 percent – Kantar has so accurately calculated the agency, which has been monitoring the grey tobacco region in this country for over a decade. The number is cool, statistical, but in practice it means hundreds of millions of cigarettes – goods that would leave Ukraine as exports to the mediate East or vanish in duty-free zones. He stayed there instead.
A year earlier, it seemed that past was going in the other direction. After dramatic 2023, erstwhile illegal sales reached evidence 25.7 percent of the market, Ukrainian services began to regain control. The Bureau of economical safety (BEB), the taxation administration and the police were unsuccessful: in October 2024 the rate fell to 12.6 percent – the lowest in 3 years. But success was fleeting like smoke.
The Geography of this communicative is not random. The largest centres of production of illegal cigarettes lie in the Lviv and Tarnopolski circuits. In Winniki, a fewer kilometres from Lviv, there is simply a mill “Nationalnyi Vyrobnik”, erstwhile known as the Lviv Tobacco Factory. Its owner, Hryhorij Kozłowski, has been accused of trading without excise work for years. In the summertime of 2024, BEB officers entered the factory. They were rapidly removed from it – by a group of masked men.
The brands Compliment and Lifa, produced in Winniky, present account for more than half of illegal exports. The remainder belongs to the competition from Tarnopola – Marshall Finest Tobacco. Her products, Marshall, Urta and Brut, fill a gap in the remainder of the grey market.
The mechanics is well known. Cigarettes are packed in containers for ‘Syria’, ‘North Cyprus’ or ‘free duts in arabian countries’. Everything looks legal in the papers. In practice, the goods stay in Odessa, Black Sea or in warehouses close Tarnopol.
Look at the situation in December 2024. Port of Odessa. 3 containers, 2 million cigarettes, declared value – 165 million hryvnia. Officially: duty-free products from Egypt, Portugal and Switzerland. In fact – production from Tarnopol.
The war on cigarettes is in parallel with the war Ukraine is conducting in the east. The grey region is not only a financial failure to the state, but besides proof that another economical crime flourishes in the shadow of the front.
New commander. A chance to make things better?
In July 2025, Julija Swyridenko became Prime Minister. 1 of her first decisions was to appoint a fresh BEB chief – Oleksandra Tsywinski, a erstwhile officer of the National Anti-corruption Bureau. This is an effort to give the service a fresh energy. As officials in Kiev say, BEB is the Ukrainian equivalent of the Polish CBS: a professional, determined and resistant to the force of oligarchs.
Is that enough? The figures show that the illegal cigaret manufacture is inactive doing well. The grey area, like smoke, will always find a rift to get out.
