The European Union has added two Uzbekistan-based cotton cellulose manufacturers to its sanctions list over allegations that their products supplied Russia’s military-industrial complex, according to Kun.uz.
The companies named in the report are the Fergana Chemical Plant and Raw Materials Cellulose, a Jizzakh-based enterprise. The article said both firms were included in the EU’s 20th sanctions package against Russia and that EU entities are now barred from providing them funds or economic resources.
The most serious allegation is that cotton cellulose from the Uzbek firms was routed to Russian gunpowder plants in Perm, Kazan and Tambov. If accurate, that would make the companies part of the supply chain for munitions production rather than ordinary industrial textiles or chemical processing.
The sanctions also freeze assets held by the firms within EU jurisdiction. That is the practical lever Brussels uses when it wants to turn a political decision into a commercial constraint: block access to money, cut off transactions and force counterparties to walk away.
According to the report, the two firms had already been sanctioned by Ukraine last year for similar reasons. That matters because it suggests the EU move did not arise from a single isolated complaint, but from a broader pattern of concern about intermediate suppliers linked to Russian defense output.
The article also included ownership details for both companies, showing how complex the local corporate structures are. Those details are not what made them sanctions targets, but they indicate that export-linked industrial firms can sit inside wider networks of shareholders and associated businesses.
The significance here goes beyond Uzbekistan itself. Moscow’s war economy depends not just on weapons factories but on materials, chemicals and processed inputs that may come from outside Russia. Cotton cellulose is one of those less visible products that can still have direct military applications when fed into ammunition or propellant production.
For the EU, the move is another attempt to squeeze the inputs that keep Russia’s defense sector running. For Uzbekistan, it is a warning that companies operating in gray-zone supply chains can become collateral damage in sanctions policy even if they are far from the battlefield.
The report is limited, and the sanctions memorandum was not reproduced in full. But the direction is clear: Brussels is widening the net from obvious military suppliers to industrial firms whose products may be used upstream in the weapons supply chain. That is where the pressure points now lie.
