Russian Military Uses China in Sourcing Banned Tech from 59 U.S. Firms
Newsweek By Daniel Bush On 6/21/23
ussia is exploiting loopholes in export controls to buy vast quantities of technology from the West that it is using to fight its war against Ukraine, with much of the material passing through China, Newsweek has found. More than 60 percent of the imported critical components in Russian weapons are coming from U.S. companies.
The scope of the tech still reaching Russia is significantly larger than acknowledged by Western officials, who frequently tout the export controls and sanctions system they have imposed against Moscow—in part to try to stop it from getting components for weapons.
Russia imported $20.3 billion in components associated with military equipment between March and December of last year, according to an analysis by KSE Institute, a think tank at the Kyiv School of Economics, to which Newsweek was given exclusive access. The figure is higher than previously reported and represents just a 15 percent drop from the year prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Companies based in the U.S. produced 64 percent of the dual-use goods—components that can be used for military purposes, as well as for consumer products such as automobiles and household appliances—that Russia imported between March and December of 2022, according to the Russian trade data.
Overall, Russia bought technology that had been manufactured by 155 companies headquartered in the U.S. or Europe, as well as in Asia and the Middle East. According to separate data compiled by Ukrainian authorities, 66 percent of the foreign critical components found in weapons systems the Russian military has used in Ukraine were manufactured by companies headquartered in the U.S.
"What we see from this data is that Russia's military still relies mostly on Western components" for its weapons systems, Elina Ribakova, the director of the International Affairs Program at the Kyiv School of Economics, told Newsweek.
Some aspects of Russia's recent trade in foreign technology have previously been reported. But taken together, the KSE report and Newsweek's further reporting provides the most comprehensive portrait to date of the extent to which Russia is evading export controls and sanctions.
The picture that emerges is one of weak trade compliance practices in parts of the private sector, myriad enforcement challenges for Western governments, and a complex global supply chain for dual-use technology. This account is based on new Russian trade data and previously unreported information compiled by Ukrainian authorities on the Russian weapons systems recovered from the battlefield, as well as on interviews with American and European officials, export control experts, military analysts, and others, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
Much more:
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-russias-vast-sanctions-evasion-secures-us-european-tech-weapons-1807939?amp=1
