REUTERS
Ukraine's State Statistics Service does not mention coal purchases from Belarus in its reports.
Belarus reportedly sells coal from Russian-occupied eastern Donbas to Ukraine, according to journalists.
Last year Belarus shipped coal to Ukraine to the tune of US$50.36 million, which was 798 times up on 2017, the Ukrainian online publication ZN.ua said, citing data from Belarus' statistics agency.
"Anthracite exports from Belarus to Ukraine skyrocketed by 307 times over the year, to US$8.82 million," it said.
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At the same time, Ukraine's State Statistics Service does not mention coal purchases from Belarus in its reports at all.
However, coal deposits in Belarus are few, and mainly brown coal is mined there.
Belarus has no anthracite deposits at all. That is, the only source of this type of coal could be purchases from other countries.
According to journalists of RFE/RL's Belarusian Service, the coal could have come to Belarus from mines located in the temporarily occupied Donbas. In particular, this way the coal is purchased by Rinat Akhmetov's DTEK and Ukraine's state-owned Centrenergo. The latter was supposed to be privatized at the end of 2018. The journalists claim that the state-owned company showed interest in this new way of buying coal from Russian-occupied Donbas after a scandal in 2016 caused by its purchases of coal from Russian-backed terrorists.
Akhmetov's company told the journalists that it did not buy coal from Belarus.
Along with Ukraine, Belarus also sold coal to the CIS countries and to Lithuania. Belarus sold anthracite mainly to the CIS and EU countries, in particular Poland.