The Telegraph has found Chinese companies supplying Russian firms sanctioned over drone production for Moscow’s war machine

Sophia Yan, Senior foreign correspondent

03 September 2025

Night and day, Russia terrorises Ukraine with kamikaze drones.

They buzz through the skies in their hundreds, overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences and indiscriminately slam into military and civilian targets.

Such drone strikes have significantly increased this summer. Just days ago, Moscow launched some 600 drones in a single night in what Ukraine described as the second-largest aerial bombardment since Vladimir Putin invaded in February 2022.

There is little to suggest these attacks will diminish. Ukrainian intelligence officials say that Russia plans to build two million first-person view (FPV) drones, 30,000 long-range and 30,000 decoy drones by the end of this year.

Now, as Putin is hosted by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, The Telegraph can reveal that Moscow has Beijing to thank for ensuring its arsenal of combat drones is never fully depleted.

The Telegraph has found that Chinese companies directly supplied parts and materials worth at least £47m to Russian firms sanctioned for producing drones, from 2023 to 2024, a period when Moscow was building large-scale logistics infrastructure for its domestic drone programme.

Nearly a quarter of the value of those shipments – £10.7m – were sent to sanctioned Russian firms linked to the production of Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones, operating in a special economic zone (SEZ) in the town of Alabuga, according to Telegraph analysis of global trade records compiled by Sayari, a risk and data intelligence company.

Goods directly exported by China to Russia included aircraft engines, microchips, metal alloys, camera lenses, fibreglass, emulsion binders for fibreglass, and carbon fibre yarns – all key components to produce the drones that wreak nightly havoc on Ukraine.

In all, The Telegraph identified 97 Chinese suppliers.

Publicly, China has feigned neutrality when it comes to Russia’s invasion. But its supply of drone parts suggests a strong military partnership between Beijing and Moscow.

This is reflected on the battlefield, where Ukrainian soldiers routinely scavenge downed Russian hardware only to discover Chinese-made parts.

“We’ve got boards and chips all the time that come from China – very clearly from China,” said an air defence pilot in the Ukrainian military, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Some of that still has the makers and producers’ brands on it; I’ve seen ones that have Chinese characters,” he added.

Getting directly involved in the war by sending military hardware or troops – as North Korea has done – would be far too risky to China’s own strategic interests.

Beijing has therefore supported Moscow from the sidelines by allowing Chinese firms to export goods with dual commercial and military purposes, pushing bilateral trade to a record £210bn in 2024.

A positive bilateral relationship is “critical for their economic survival”, said Andrea Ghiselli, a lecturer who specialises in China’s foreign policy at the University of Exeter.

“One has a very important interest in the survival of the other; this is not going to change. It’s a simple, geographic fact,” he said, as the two countries share a 2,600-mile border.

This approach gives Beijing room to accuse the West for being the ones to foment war by dispatching weapons systems and military support to Ukraine.

“It gives them the possibility to say, ‘we don’t support Russia; no, we don’t provide military support’,” Mr Ghiselli said. “It’s a fig leaf, but it’s deniability, and that’s important.”

In early July, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said privately to European officials that it simply could not afford for Russia to lose the war as it would risk allowing the US to turn its full attention to China.

One day later, Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister, posted pictures online of a Chinese component made by Suzhou ECOD Precision Manufacturing – clearly imprinted on the part – saying it had been salvaged from a Geran-2 combat drone [Russia’s clone of the Iranian Shahed-136], downed during a recent attack on Kyiv.

Chinese firms including Changzhou Utek Composite, Taishan Fiberglass, Jilin Hongsheng Trading, Yongji Rongdu Commercial and Trading, and Hebei Jigao have supplied a range of fibreglass and carbon fibre products, such as yarns, binding agents, processing components and glass fibre powder – all sent directly to Russian firms operating in Alabuga involved in the production of Geran/Shahed drones.

Harbin Bin-Au Technology, Jinhua Hairun Power Technology and Shandong Xinyilu International Trade have also supplied aircraft engines and components worth at least £860,000 to Drake LLC, which operates in Alabuga.

Over just three months in 2023, China’s Ningbo Peak Cloud Import and Export sent aircraft and aircraft engines worth £3m to Russia’s Ural Civil Aviation Factory, sanctioned for manufacturing combat drones, including the Forpost, used to monitor troop movements and strike critical infrastructure.

The Telegraph has also identified five Russian firms, all globally sanctioned, that are responsible for importing components from China, and directly source a large share of Chinese parts used in drone manufacturing.

Those Russian firms – Ural Civil Aviation, Akmetron, PT Electronic, PT Elektronik and Radioline – have purchased a range of components from Chinese suppliers, such as Asia Link Shanghai International Logistics, which has sent everything from metal products to electronic chips.

In early 2023, Moscow and Tehran agreed a £1.5bn deal to manufacture the Shahed drones domestically in Russia.

But “after Iran handed over drawings, software, and production technologies for Shahed-136 drones […] Russia established full-fledged domestic production,” wrote the Center for Defense Reforms, a Ukrainian research organisation, in a report reviewed by The Telegraph.

“Since then, Iran has faded into the background,” the report says. “China has become the main external supplier, with critical components such as engines and navigation systems coming from China.”

Much of Russia’s domestic production of the Shahed is occurring at the Alabuga SEZ, strategically located on the right bank of a river that leads south into the Caspian Sea. On the other side lies Iran, allowing for direct transport of materials.

It’s also here, 600 miles east of Moscow, where Russia’s improved, home-grown adaptations – the Garpiya attack and Gerbera decoy drones – are rolling off assembly lines, supported by Iranian blueprints and a steady supply of Chinese components.

Russia’s Garpiya drone, for instance, is powered by Chinese engines from Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine.

Production rates have increased significantly: during the first half of 2024, more than 2,000 Garpiya drones rolled off the production line, up from the 2,500 such drones Russia previously produced over a year.

Mile Hao Xiang Technology, which makes the engines found in the Gerbera, shipped products worth more than £1.3m to Russia in 2022 to 2023, both directly and through intermediaries, according to the Center for Defense Reforms. Its main Russian importers were Sequoia JSC and Unikom LLC.

Over the last three years, one Russian firm – Alabuga-Fiber LLC – has imported 3,000 tonnes of carbon fibre yarn worth £18.4m from China, produced by companies including Jilin Hongsheng Trading, Jilin Tangu Carbon Fiber Co and Jilin Chemical Fiber Friend Textile.

Russia’s Morgan LLC has imported goods worth nearly £4.3m from China to the Alabuga SEZ drone factory.

Among its largest suppliers were the Suzhou ECOD, the company whose name was printed clearly on the part posted online by Mr Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister.

Suzhou ECOD, sanctioned by Ukraine, has sent £1.2m worth of products since it began supplying Russia in August 2024, according to the Center for Defense Reforms.

Morgan has also imported lithium batteries worth nearly £860,000, listed in documents as goods needed for a “special military operation” – as Russia describes its invasion of Ukraine.

Drones have allowed Russia to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems – particularly given an increased use of decoy drones – and to attack crucial infrastructure more reliably.

It has also allowed the Russian military to maximise psychological warfare by creating an environment of constant stress for Ukrainians.

China is likely supplying Russia with far more than what the trade records reviewed by The Telegraph and Sayari are able to reflect, and the monetary estimates should be considered a floor – not a ceiling – as neither country consistently reports shipments with accuracy.

Beijing has previously attempted to ship disassembled drones by mislabelling them as wind turbine parts, despite international weapons bans.

Still, the trade data provides a “lens demonstrating the significant role of Chinese component manufacturers and exporters in Russia’s defence industrial base”, said Phil Kittock, an analyst at Sayari.

What’s harder to capture are goods indirectly transferred through third countries, a practice that experts and soldiers say has allowed Russia to skirt sanctions and import crucial Chinese components, and even parts from the US, France and Germany.

“It’s a pretty common occurrence,” said the Ukrainian air defence pilot. “Not enough is being done to stifle the flow of these components to third parties that are smuggling them into Russia.”

“They are claiming to be importing HVACs [air conditioning equipment], computers, gaming consoles and things like that, but they are being smuggled into western Russia, where they have a lot of these drone plants, and built with the express purpose of terrorising civilians.”

More than three years since Russia first invaded Ukraine, China has continued to avoid denouncing Moscow in public.

Just before Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Putin was even welcomed by Xi to Beijing, when it hosted the Winter Olympics.

A month later, in March 2022, China abstained from a UN resolution to condemn Russian aggression and to demand the withdrawal of troops, a position it has continued to hold.

China has gone so far as to reportedly allow Russia to establish a weapons programme on its soil to develop and produce long-range attack drones – specifically the Garpiya-3 – and to deliver finished systems to Moscow, as described by intelligence sources to Reuters in 2024.

None of the companies contacted by The Telegraph replied to requests for comment; not all firms could be reached.

At a time when Western partners have cut ties with Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine, China has come to the rescue, filling the trade gap by buying Russian oil and selling everything from cars to electronics.

A Telegraph investigation in late 2023 found that China was helping to arm Russia with helicopters, drones, optical sights and crucial metals used by the defence ministry.

In late August, the two countries conducted their first joint submarine drills in the Pacific – yet another sign of growing ties, partly based on a strong friendship between Putin and Xi.

The pair have met more than 45 times; spending more time with each other than with any other leaders, even regularly gifting each other birthday presents and hosting parties.

Most recently, the pair met in China at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, along with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, ahead of Wednesday’s parade.

Despite the threat of secondary sanctions or sky-high tariffs against China for buying Russian oil – as Donald Trump has repeatedly warned – nothing seems to ruffle Beijing, which is already embroiled in a protracted tit-for-tat trade war with Washington.

The US, for its part, has made good on some of its warnings, recently slapping tariffs of up to 50 per cent on imports from India in a move ostensibly meant to punish the South Asian nation for buying Russian crude.

To a certain extent, China would be glad to see the war end and for peace to resume, which would support its global economic ambitions.

“China benefits from stability around the world,” said Mr Ghiselli. “But if they had to choose between a strategic interests perspective and the principles of diplomacy, they will go with strategic interests first.”

“Beijing simply cannot abandon Putin.”

Additional reporting by Audrey MacAlpine