NYT: Russia receives US chips for its missiles through shadow companies and Chinese distribution networks

Despite sanctions, Russia has received nearly $4 billion in restricted chips since 2022, The New York Times reports.

Many of them were delivered from Hong Kong, where an extensive network of shadow companies operates, exporting the sanctioned equipment. Russia uses this equipment to produce weapons, including drones and cruise missiles.

To obtain technologies, Russia turns to international distributors in China, Türkiye, India, Serbia, and Singapore, which receive production directly from manufacturers of the equipment.

This is the moment when the US loses control over the details of weapons, as according to the law, the producers aren’t responsible for tracking where their goods go from the distributors.

Some middlemen companies are part of longtime networks of offshore firms owned by Russian businessmen.

China plays an essential role in delivering technology to Russia as the world’s leading electronics assembler. It imports a large amount of Western components and turns them into consumer electronics. The country’s enterprises can easily channel the supplies to Moscow, industry experts say.

On 8 July, a Russian missile targeted a children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing two and injuring ten people, including seven children. Overall, the attack killed 33 people in several cities of Ukraine.

According to Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention, many components in Kh-101 long-range cruise missile were produced in the US, including the Field Programmable Gate Array, or F.P.G.A. chip. It is used in fire alarms, modems, missiles and drones to quickly process data.

This tech in banned from being send to the terrorist country. However, since 2022, Moscow has imported more than $390 million in F.P.G.A.s – a drop in the ocean of the componenets trade that is going on between China and Russia.

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