A Russian businessman living in Dubai has spent the past two years operating a Hong Kong shell company that ships European electronics to Russia’s defense industry, according to an investigation published by Trap Aggressor, a Ukrainian anti-corruption outlet and NGO that investigates sanctions evasion.
As the investigation shows, Yevgeniy Pluzhnik registered MAG Smart Solution Limited in Hong Kong in September 2023—eighteen months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered sweeping Western sanctions.
Since then, his company has delivered over $564,000 worth of German and Czech-made equipment to a single Russian customer, with the most recent shipment documented in February 2025.
The case illustrates a broader pattern: despite 19 EU sanctions packages and extensive US export controls, individual operators continue to exploit jurisdictional gaps—particularly in Hong Kong—to keep Russian weapons development running. And Pluzhnik isn’t just a middleman. He co-founded one of Russia’s largest robotics companies, which has focused on military applications since 2022.
The tools Russia can’t build
The products Pluzhnik ships aren’t weapons—they’re something more valuable. Oscilloscopes and signal generators are precision instruments essential for testing and calibrating radar systems, electronic warfare equipment, and missile guidance. Without them, Russia cannot develop or maintain the systems that track Ukrainian aircraft or jam Ukrainian drones.
Western defense contractors like Tektronix and Keysight build oscilloscopes specifically for military applications.
These instruments let engineers verify that radar pulses fire correctly, that jamming signals hit the correct frequencies, and that guidance systems respond as designed. Russia’s domestic electronics industry has never mastered this technology.
An analysis by the Lviv Herald noted that Ukrainian investigators have catalogued over 5,000 distinct foreign components across nearly 200 Russian weapon systems—evidence of structural dependence on imports that sanctions were supposed to cut off.
Pluzhnik’s shipments go to a Moscow company called Tekhnologii Testirovania, registered just two months before his Hong Kong operation launched. Russian court records reveal this firm supplies equipment to NNPO Frunze, a major Rostec subsidiary in Nizhny Novgorod, which produces military radio-electronic devices. The US State Department sanctioned the Frunze plant in January 2025, specifically citing its role in Russia’s defense sector.
The robotics connection
According to Pluzhnik’s LinkedIn profile and Russian corporate records, he co-founded Promobot, one of Russia’s largest robotics manufacturers. The company, headquartered in Perm, has shifted focus toward military applications since 2022.
Trap Aggressor’s investigation found that Promobot “regularly presents its robots at ‘Army Russia’ forums,” where its products have been inspected by Valentina Matvienko, chair of Russia’s Federation Council. In April 2025, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov announced plans to dramatically increase deliveries of ground-based robots to the military—a sector where Promobot is positioning itself.
A family business
The investigation traces a broader network. Pluzhnik’s daughters, Veronika and Angelina, founded Russian IT companies in 2023—one of them, Neirobotiks, supplies products to Russian-occupied Crimea. Though the daughters are listed as official founders, Trap Aggressor notes that Pluzhnik claims co-founder status on social media.
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He also founded a private school near Moscow in 2018, where children participate in collections “to help residents of Donetsk” and attend lectures from participants in Russia’s so-called “special military operation.”
“The entire system we’ve described shows that Pluzhnik’s business is not isolated contracts, but a stable mechanism for supplying Russian military enterprises,” Trap Aggressor concluded.
The Hong Kong gap
Pluzhnik’s operation exploits a gap that Western governments have struggled to close. In October 2022, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee stated that the territory would not enforce sanctions beyond those mandated by the UN Security Council, which excludes most Western measures against Russia.
The EU’s sanctions envoy, David O’Sullivan, has acknowledged that 70 to 80 percent of Russia’s Western inputs of battlefield and dual-use items travel via China or Hong Kong.
Analysis by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, using data from security nonprofit C4ADS as well as corporate records and open-source data, found that Hong Kong-based companies shipped $1.97 billion worth of goods to Russian buyers in just five months during late 2023. Forty percent by value were high-priority items such as semiconductors and processors.
The EU’s 19th sanctions package, adopted in October 2025, targeted 12 entities in China and Hong Kong for circumvention. But as the EU sanctions envoy admitted in 2023: “There’s always going to be a degree of circumvention. There’s money to be made.”
Meanwhile, Pluzhnik posts photos from the UAE on Instagram. His Hong Kong company continues operating. And European electronics keep flowing to the factories that build Russia’s weapons.
