Yury Kobzar15:55, 12.11.23

3 min.282

Moscow has long relied on the theft of technologies that it is not capable of producing on its own.

Russia has long and deliberately relied on smuggling methods to obtain Western microchips for its military industry. Western governments are experiencing significant difficulties in cutting off all these long-established smuggling chains, writes the Financial Times .

Because microchips are a “dual-use” technology and subject to stricter export controls, Moscow’s strategy has long been to simply smuggle finished products, said Chris Miller, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

“Several decades ago, the Russian government made the decision to rely on smuggled technologies for some of its most sensitive defense applications, because it would be too expensive to produce them domestically, and it would be impossible to imagine weapons production without them. And so the choice was made to simply rely on state-of-the-art commercial capabilities smuggled into Russia,” Miller says.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the need for microchips has become even greater. Therefore, Russian intelligence pays a lot of attention to the issues of organizing smuggled supplies of electronics.

Now there are cells of this smuggling network in Ireland, France, Dubai, Germany, Singapore, China, Turkey, Greece and Serbia. Some of them have been around since the 1990s. When Russians have doubts about the safety of one smuggling route, they switch to another.

“The Russians understand export controls and regulations – they know what’s legal, they know what’s illegal. They’re very good at using distribution networks to create front companies,” says Thomas Krueger, former director of strategic trade and nonproliferation at the US National Security Council. .

Experts note that Moscow has largely relied on smuggling and theft of technology since the days of Stalin. For example, the first Soviet nuclear bomb was created thanks to data obtained by Soviet intelligence.

Later, when the Soviet Union concluded that it had no chance of catching up with Western microchip production, hundreds of intelligence officers were sent around the world looking for ways to steal parts and technology for Soviet industry.

Russia continues to increase weapons production despite sanctions

As UNIAN wrote, the Russians began to use a new version of the Lancet drone , and now anti-cumulative grilles and anti-drone nets will not protect against its attacks. Now it triggers before reaching the armor, as it did before. 

At the same time, analysts state that the Russians give priority to the production of drones rather than missiles. Now Russia has hit a “ceiling” regarding the production volumes of some missiles. But entire factories are being built from scratch that will produce unmanned aerial vehicles.

(C)UNIAN 2023