OREANDA-NEWS  By the end of April-May 2024, Russian exporters shipped a total of 132 thousand tons of coal to the North Korean port of Rajin through the Hassan-Rajin land border crossing. The final recipient of these products was China, the Kommersant newspaper reports, citing statistics from Argus analysts.

The last time information was published on the supply of Russian coal to China via this route was based on the results of the first quarter of 2021. At that time, the Russian Federation sent 15,000 tons of coal to China through the North Korean port for a total amount of 836.7 thousand dollars. However, since then, no official statistics have been published in this area.

Before that, Russia exported coal to the DPRK via this route in 2011-2017. In 2019, the Russian ambassador to the CNDD, Alexander Matsegora, stated that a number of domestic suppliers prefer to avoid this direction because of the risk of falling under the sanctions of the US authorities.

Earlier, the RIA Novosti news agency, citing data from the Chinese state service, reported record purchases of Russian brown coal by China. By the end of May 2024, China imported these products from the Russian Federation for a total amount of 53 million dollars. The achieved result was the highest since September 2022. In total, coal supplies exceeded one billion dollars.