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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Who is in the tobacco shadow?
Against the backdrop of the SEB and National Police raid on two illegal tobacco factories in Kharkiv region and Lviv region, an interesting question has arisen.
How is the whole tobacco shadow system actually structured, the one that bleeds the budget by 33 billion hryvnias every year?
How many of these factories are operating and do we know about them all?
To understand the scale of the problem, I will cite a thesis from the global auditor KPMG's study, which states that
“Ukraine ranked third among 38 European countries in terms of sales of illicit tobacco products.”
We have long since become a large European factory for illicit tobacco products, which drains the Ukrainian budget and creates economic problems for our partners as well.
The same KPMG study states:
“Illicit cigarettes reached 10,3% of consumption in the EU in 2025 (41,8 billion), with lost tax revenues of 16,7 billion euros.”
An astronomical market in volume, which obviously involves not only Ukrainian factories.
Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Poland have their own shadow tobacco lines. But we also hold our place in the TOP there.
If you look at KANTAR dynamics, the illicit cigarette market in Ukraine in 2020 stood at 5%, and by the fall of 2023 it rose to 25,7%.
The scale of the catastrophe then became such that G7 ambassadors and U.S. Special Representative Penny Pritzker intervened.
They brought counterfeits to the Presidential Office and stated that combating illicit producers is a condition for providing financial assistance to the country.
Law enforcement then blocked all producers for almost a year, and “Hoshcha” and several other small factories were completely wiped out.
For several months the SEB also tightly blocked the Vynnyky factory.
Then the level of the “shadow” fell to 12%. But from 2025 it began to rise.
As of April 2026 it was already 19,8%. But people in the market say that the figure is overstated.
But who is actually producing all of this?
For some reason KANTAR only sees two companies on the market: Vynnyky Tobacco Factory, to which it attributes 55% of the market, and Marshall Finest Tobacco Ukraine LLC, to which it assigns 44%.
But this distribution does not match reality at all.
For example, in March 2026 the SEB shut down a factory in Chernivtsi with a capacity of 10 000 cigarettes per minute.
According to Tsyvinsky, this is the largest production uncovered during the existence of the SEB.
Control over this factory is attributed to former Deputy Prosecutor General Ihor Mustetsa, while actual management was carried out by a mysterious Edgar, whom I have already mentioned in the context of fermentation factories acting as the main suppliers of raw materials to illicit manufacturers.
This refers to POTESTAS LLC and Ferment Plus LLC. The latter imported over 2000 tons of tobacco into 2022, which were, in fact, destined for the Chernivtsi factory.
These are astronomical volumes.
But strangely, the products of this factory, and the factory itself, are for some reason not reflected in the KANTAR study.
For comparison of volumes, here is the data on other tobacco importers for the first half of 2026.
Vynnyky Tobacco Factory LLC (National Manufacturer LLC).
16,7 tons of tobacco raw material for 252,5 thousand $
MARSHALL FINEST TOBACCO UKRAINE LLC
79,8 tons of tobacco raw material for 172 368 $
LUX-TRADE COMMERCE LLC (which I wrote about a few months ago)
1 239 tons of tobacco raw material for 7,7 million $.
In May–June they imported Indian tobacco from Bulgaria (about 150 tons), as well as Azerbaijani (78 tons).
So an interesting picture emerges.
On the one hand, there are two monster producers (Vynnyky and Marshall) that everyone knows and pressures, and on the other hand there are an unknown number of not less powerful factories whose existence nobody knows about and whose operations are not even included in the studies. KANTAR, I have a question for you.
Chernivtsi, two factories in Kharkiv region and Lviv region. Or a no less powerful factory near Kyiv, in Vyshneve, which law enforcement has so far not spotted.
And, given the statistics and the availability of tobacco on the domestic market, the problem will continue to gain momentum.
Is it possible that the tax office, customs, and the whole army of law enforcement have no analysts to study the movement of raw materials and cigarette production components, in order to at least rein in its furious growth?
Or are we waiting for another visit by U.S. special representatives to the Presidential Office with packs of counterfeits?
Is that really how we operate?
