An investigation by the Kyiv Independent found that Russian arms manufacturers are still gorging themselves on Western microchips.
A motley crew of Russian microelectronics suppliers are happily snapping up American and European chips and flogging them off to missile makers like Ruselectronics—Russia’s state tech holding.
Without these chips, Russia couldn’t produce much of anything beyond angry press releases and tweets. Cruise missiles, drones, artillery systems—all lovingly stitched together using components made in the same countries trying to stop the bloodshed.
Hacks and hackettes at the Kyiv Independent pretended to be Russian defence firms. Posing as representatives of Almaz (a weapons company), they emailed two dozen Russian chip vendors with a shopping list of banned American parts. Ten replied with a chipper “No problem” and ready-to-go quotes. One even included warehouse inventories—millions of Western chips just sitting there.
Names like Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, and even Troubled Chipzilla all popped up; despite their PR departments tutting loudly and swearing blind, they’ve got nothing to do with it. While they may have cut direct shipments to Russia, those chips are still getting there via a convenient game of semiconductor pass-the-parcel through China and Hong Kong.
The real MVPs here are shady middlemen in Shenzhen and warehouse nobodies in Kowloon, flogging banned chips through shell companies. Some, like Analog Technology and Icscan Electronic, are barely more than a name and a dodgy website. Still, they've sent hundreds of thousands of components downstream to Tsar Putin’s arms factories—many of them made in the very countries upholding the sanctions regime.
According to customs data, it's not just America to blame. Chips from German, Dutch, and other European firms also continue their merry march into the Russian war machine.
Let’s be clear: the Russian defence industry can’t function without these Western chips. Internal memos from Ruselectronics read like a Silicon Valley wish list, begging for Analog Devices parts because the domestic knockoffs are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. One note whinges that Russian alternative “do not comply with the design documentation.”
“For the Russians, this stuff is absolutely critical,” explains James Byrne, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-headquartered security think tank. “They can't build missiles without it. It's not like they're just going to give up.”
Even when the Americans stopped delivering after the war kicked off, the Russian firm Elitcom breezily replied, “Don’t worry, we’ve got foreign partners who can sort it.”
The suppliers include the usual suspects: Modern Digital Technologies, Imotek, AST Components, and Orion-Electronika. Some even proactively offered their services to the Russian military, like Kristal, whose CEO happily bragged about access to “global distributors” in an email dated just 19 days after Russian troops started trying to redraw Europe’s borders with artillery.
The real comedy is that many of these chip hustlers have direct links to the Kremlin’s favourite defence conglomerate, Rostec. Some are run by ex-major generals, others by oligarchs like Vladimir Yevtushenkov.
And here’s where it gets downright grotesque: among the chips offered are those found inside actual missiles like the Kinzhal and Kalibr, which have rained death on Ukrainian cities. So, yes, when a missile slams into a block of flats, you can thank a supply chain that includes a retired Russian general, a Hong Kong wholesaler with a dodgy Gmail address, and a Western chipmaker crying, “Not our fault!” from their air-conditioned boardroom.
Despite all this, many of these Russian and Chinese entities have yet to face US sanctions. Presumably, Wall Street's cocaine nose jobs are too busy watching quarterly earnings to pay attention to who’s using their products. Intel, Analog Devices, and others made the usual statements condemning resale and promising they’ll investigate it.
Western companies claim they can only see “one or two steps down” their supply chains. If a distributor sells to someone who sells to someone who sells to a bloke in Moscow, they throw their hands up like Pontius Pilate and hope the chips don’t land on CNN.
Experts say tighter compliance, brutal secondary sanctions, and proper internal investigations are needed. However, encouraging Silicon Valley to hire supply chain compliance officers is unlikely.
