May 2 (Reuters) - U.S. agriculture companies have been

brisk importers of Russian fertilizer since the 2022 Ukraine

invasion, a practice that is unwittingly helping fund Russia's

war against Ukraine, U.S. producer CF Industries ( CF ) said on

Thursday.

The U.S. does not impose sanctions directly on Russian

fertilizer, which is important to global food supplies and

prices. On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued

hundreds of fresh sanctions on other Russian targets over the

war.

"What's kind of shocking is there's been all of this focus

on not funding the Russian war machine and not buying Russian

gas," CF's CEO Tony Will said on a quarterly earnings call. "And

yet, the U.S. is arms wide open to take urea and UAN (urea

ammonium nitrate) coming out of Russia, which is effectively

just natural gas that's been converted (into fertilizer).

"So the U.S. is funding the very war effort over there that

on the one hand it's condemning."

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for

comment.

The biggest U.S. urea importers from Russia since its

invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to March 2024 are ECO

Fertilizers, Swiss-based EuroChem and U.S. grain-handling giant

Archer-Daniels-Midland ( ADM ), according to U.S. import data

provided to Reuters by ImportYeti, a company that provides

information about suppliers by tracking bills of lading.

ECO Fertilizers, the company Russian fertilizer producer

Acron Group uses to import into the U.S., according to CF,

imported about 575 million metric tons during the period.

The company's address is listed online as Hollywood,

Florida, but it could not be immediately reached at its email

address.

EuroChem, founded by Russian businessman Andrey Melnichenko,

imported at least 81 million tons of urea from Russia via its

U.S. subsidiaries.

ADM imported at least about 16.8 million tons of urea from

Russia between February 2022 and March 2024 via five

subsidiaries. Some grain handlers, which buy crops from farmers,

use those relationships to sell growers inputs such as

fertilizer as well.

EuroChem and ADM did not immediately respond to requests for

comment.

CF, based in Illinois, is one of the world's biggest

nitrogen fertilizer producers and competes against Russian

imports. Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas and the

U.S. has imposed sanctions on a project owned by Russia's

largest producer of liquefied natural gas.

CF does not import Russian fertilizer, company spokesperson

Chris Close said.

Will did not say whether CF is calling on the U.S. to

sanction Russian fertilizer.

Wholesale producers typically sell fertilizer to separate

retail companies that sell it directly to farmers, or through

their own retail stores.