Made in the USA

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is behaving as if it has no leverage over Russia: voting with North Korea, Belarus and Sudan rather than its nominal allies at the UN General Assembly, and refusing to use the term dictator to describe Vladimir Putin, despite his jailing or exiling of all political opponents. Nevertheless, the White House goes out of its way to suggest that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has no desire for peace simply as he refuses to capitulate to Putin’s military aggression.

At the same time, three years of war have confirmed that Russia is actually heavily dependent on the West. The Ukrainian intelligence services have found non-Russian components in almost all the high-precision missiles and drones used by the Russian military in Ukraine. In 95% of cases, the parts are made in the West, and in 72% of cases the components — primarily integrated circuits — are made in the US.

Gathering customs data on the hundreds of thousands of microchip shipments that have been made to Russia so far during the war, Novaya Gazeta Europe demonstrated just how little impact Western sanctions have had on Russia, which continues to receive much of what it needs to fuel its war machine from the West.

Open-heart surgery was being performed when a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile struck Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, in Kyiv on 8 July. In the ensuing chaos, as much of the building collapsed, the evacuated children and staff, some of whom were mid-surgery, had to wait outside on the street, many with drips in their arms. Investigators later discovered that there were no fewer than 16 Western components used in the cruise missile, made in both the US and Switzerland, according to The Financial Times.

A year and a half beforehand, a café in the Kharkiv region village of Hroza where around 60 people had gathered for a memorial service was struck by a Russian Iskander missile, killing 59 people, including an eight-year-old child and 11 pensioners. The Ukrainian intelligence services found 37 Western-made components in the wreckage of the Iskander missile.

Western countries imposed strict sanctions on the supply of so-called dual-use goods — products that have a legitimate civilian purpose but can also be used for military purposes — to Russia immediately after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet the Ukrainian authorities continue to identify Western components in Russian weapons.

According to Novaya Gazeta Europe’s calculations, for which data published by Ukrainian Defence Intelligence (GUR) was used, at least 722 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Russian attacks using weapons built with foreign components since the war began. All the same, this conservative figure is likely significantly lower than the real one.

Novaya Europe has now identified over 4,000 Russian attacks that were carried out using weapons containing Western parts. Microprocessors were the most frequently discovered Western-made components, all of which were made by one of three US companies: Texas Instruments, Analog Devices and Maxim Integrated Products.

Between them, these three companies made components that were used in a third of all the attacks recorded by the GUR, specifically in Russian missiles and drones that have killed civilians.

Despite approaching all three companies for comment on the findings, none had responded by Monday.

Microchips for war

The vice presidents of the largest four US microprocessor manufacturers — AMD, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Intel — were summoned to a Senate hearing on US technologies being used to fuel the Russian military machine in September. The representatives of each company assured senators that they were doing everything they could to stop the Russian military getting their hands on their products.

Nevertheless, the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations suggested in its subsequent report that the companies were in fact doing very little in this regard. The companies have gone on the record to stress their strong opposition to the use of their products in Russian weapons, and have promised to increase monitoring of compliance with sanctions legislation.

However, customs data for 2022–2024 tells another story, and according to Novaya Europe’s analysis, microchips made by Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Maxim Integrated entered Russia on a daily basis, with Russian customs recording an average of 4,000 deliveries per month.

Exceptions to the rule

In addition to each Western country’s primary sanctions regime, which prohibits the export of certain goods from it to Russia, there’s also the option of imposing secondary sanctions on individuals or companies in third countries who continue to supply Russia with sanctioned goods. The threat of secondary sanctions is often sufficient to make microchip suppliers in third countries that have not sanctioned Russia, such as Türkiye, the UAE or China, fall into line.

Once a company appears on a sanctions list, its assets may be frozen, its access to the international banking system will be blocked, and it will face restrictions when doing business in the country that imposed the sanctions. The most dangerous sanctions for business are those imposed by the United States or Europe, vast economies intrinsically enmeshed in the global financial system with powerful banking sectors.

Nevertheless, only about half of the 100 largest Russian companies importing dual-use goods have been sanctioned, roughly the same amount as the leading 100 non-Russian companies exporting goods to Russia. What’s more, a significant number of sanctioned firms has continued to import semiconductors to Russia, despite restrictions.

Of the 100 leading companies supplying microchips to Russia, 40 remain unsanctioned, while many of those who have been sanctioned continue to do business with Russia regardless. Just 13 companies have stopped trading with Russia altogether, while 15 continue to import microelectronics to Russia. Drawing an unambiguous conclusion regarding the remaining 32 companies is a challenge: many of them were only sanctioned in mid-2024, after the period covered by the customs data used to make the calculations.

A similar picture emerges in relation to Russian companies purchasing Western microelectronics. Over half of the top 100 Russian importers have yet to be sanctioned by the West, and at least 16 companies under Western sanctions have continued operating regardless. Half as many — just 8 out of 100 — stopped supplying chips to Russia altogether. For the remaining 21 companies on which sanctions have recently been imposed, it’s still too early to draw any conclusions.

‘Humanitarian’ needs

Microelectronics aren’t used solely in military technology, of course, and the small print of US sanctions legislation specifies that in rare cases, microchips can be supplied to Russia for humanitarian purposes.

Nevertheless, some of the largest Russian buyers of electronics make little or no effort to hide their ties to weapons manufacturers. For instance, the website of the SPS-Group, which has purchased microprocessors made by Texas Instruments to the tune of over $200,000 (€180,000), says the company represents the Arzamas Instrument Plant in the Nizhny Novgorod region, which, according to its own director, supplies 90% of its gyroscopes and aviation steering systems to the defence sector and is currently under US and EU sanctions.

Another example is Onelec, a company under US sanctions that nevertheless purchased microprocessors from Texas Instruments costing over €1.2 million. Onelec’s owner also has a second company, Onelec VPK, which supplies Russia’s military-industrial complex, according to the company website. Among the customer reviews is one from Radiopribor, which produces equipment for aviation and missiles and belongs to state-owned corporation Rostec.

Friends and middlemen

US-made microprocessors make it to Russia via intermediaries in third countries. Novaya Europe has calculated that among the top 100 suppliers, companies from Hong Kong feature most frequently, followed by suppliers based in China, the UAE and Thailand, none of which have imposed their own sanctions on Russia.

But there are exceptions, with dual-use goods also being supplied to Russia by companies registered in Serbia, Türkiye and even the European Union, although these account for a much smaller proportion of supplies.

Aerospace Components, since renamed Smart Energy Technology, registered in Hungary, has supplied a relatively small amount of Western microelectronics valued at $75,000 (€69,000) to Russia, though it has not been sanctioned. Although registered in Hungary, it was founded by two Russians, Andrey Sivozhelezov and Andrey Rusak, who, with the United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) also co-own a business that distributes microelectronics in Russia. Incidentally, URSC produces the Kh-101 cruise missile that was responsible for destroying the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv.

While the foreign-made parts found in Russian weapons most often come from the US, other countries have also failed in their efforts to end the supply of similar products to Russia. According to GUR data, 22 countries that have imposed far-reaching sanctions on Russia including Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Germany and Poland, also figure among those supplying the country with vital components for military use.

These countries are responsible for 95% of Russia’s total supply. According to Kyiv, components manufactured by some 250 different companies have been found in Russian weaponry.

Many specialists argue that manufacturers are still not doing enough to stop the supply of their goods to Russia, and one key issue is the lack of interest on the part of the industry’s leading firms in investing in complex monitoring systems, something the authorities in many countries still haven’t sufficiently encouraged.

Sanctions and liability

Despite the fact that the US still has the leverage to impose further sanctions and enforce liability for any violations of its sanctions regime, the warming relations between Moscow and Washington suggest that the US won’t be tightening its sanctions regime any time soon.

However, that could be deceptive. As Vladislav Netyaev, a researcher with Transparency International Russia, notes, the first Trump administration actively imposed sanctions on Russian firms connected to the supply of dual-use goods, and even extended some sanctions until March 2026, while in January, Trump threatened to impose new sanctions if Russia stood in the way of Ukraine peace negotiations.

Violating sanctions is a criminal offence in many countries, though compliance is usually regulated at the national level, meaning that effectively, any company registered in a country that hasn’t itself imposed sanctions on Russia, such as the UAE or China, is not obliged to comply with restrictions imposed by another country, so American or European law does not apply.

Theoretically, the US could punish the manufacturers, even if they don’t directly sell their goods to Russia. Firms are required to monitor their supply chains all the way to the end user and to bear not only moral but also legal responsibility for doing so. Under US law, violating export monitoring legislation carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million (€915,000).

“The measures taken by companies to prevent the export of their products to Russia have been ineffective, with state regulators and US courts failing to fine or punish companies whose goods were found illegally in Russia, even though they could,” notes Netyaev. “The difficulty is that in court you have to prove that the company ignored the rules and failed to check the party it was dealing with.” While such accusations have been made in Congress, nobody has yet attempted to prove them in court.

However, if Russia’s current leaders are one day found guilty of committing war crimes in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court, liability could theoretically extend to the manufacturers of parts made for civilian use that were found at the site of a known war crime. “But you would have to prove in court that the company knew or should have known that its products could be used for military purposes,” says Netyaev, adding that he sees little chance of that happening.