The Russian-Ukrainian war has been playing its third year, and Western military officials are rubbing their heads at the speculation, where does Russia get its resources?
There is a feeling that Russia’s resources seem to be endless, missile accessories seem to be endless, today to blow up an arsenal of weapons, tomorrow to blow up a transportation hub.
If we refer to the sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States on Russia, the company's missile chips should have been exhausted long ago, and other spare parts should also be cut off.
But it was not until the British dismantled the Russian missiles that they discovered that the accessories of these missiles actually came from three countries! And they are three countries that people simply can't imagine!
Which countries provide missile accessories to Russia?
1. Sanctions, "sanctions"...
Last summer, the Royal Joint Service Institute withdrew 27 Russian-made weapons from the Ukrainian front.
These weapons were large enough to be intercepted, and comparatively complete cruise missiles, smaller to the missile's spirals, and even the guiding systems of the missiles captured were moved to the laboratory.
The engineers dismantled all the weapons they could get, the entire missile was dismantled into pieces smaller than the nail cover, and then watched with an amplifier.
The first missile they dismantled was a commonly used "calibration" cruise missile used by the Russian army, which often caused trouble to Ukraine on the battlefield.
After the shell was opened, it was found that the core control module of the missile was not written in Russian, but a single-chip TI MSP430 from the Texas Instrument Factory in the United States.
Speaking of this single-camera is not at all military products, but ordinary toys and household appliances control panels, if ordered from Amazon, less than $ 20 per piece.
The minds of Russian military workers have changed the process, and this toy chip has been fitted into the missile, becoming the brain of the missile.
As for the missile sensors, it's even more amazing! I actually use the IMX series camera from Sony Japan. This kind of camera was originally installed in mobile phones and driving recorders. Engineers in the Russian military industry put them in missiles to identify ground targets.
The funniest thing is that the recognition accuracy of these cameras is much higher than that of Russia's own military sensors!
The British were more and more surprised, the power supply system of the missile is fitted with the capacitor of the German Bosch and the power semiconductor of the Infineon, and the welding point can also be analyzed, the electric welding machine and the welding strip is the Japanese Panasonic!
Later, they dismantled the "Iskander" ballistic missile, the "Geranium-2" drone, and even the old "Hail" rocket launcher.
All the results of the dismantling made Europe and the United States shut their mouths, and these weapons dismantled more than 450 parts, almost no Russian own!
U.S. enterprises contributed 317 kinds, accounting for more than 70 percent, Japan and Germany followed, with precision resistance in Switzerland, photomotor parts in the Netherlands, storage chips in South Korea, and so on.
Even in a Russian military hand grenade captured by Ukrainian soldiers, the microchip is a product of U.S. microchip technology!
That is to say, Russian missiles are products made by all countries, and they still hit yourself with the parts you produce!
The Grey Transaction
Looking at the results of the British survey, European and American countries and NATO as a whole are silent.
It makes sense that these countries can't figure it out. Europe and the United States have clearly imposed the most stringent sanctions on Russia in history since 2022, ranging from electronic components, semiconductors, and mechanical parts to daily department stores, and even cultural products. and movies are on the sanctions list.
But how could Russia get so many “imports” with this whole embargo? is it difficult for Russia to save 10 years of goods before the war?
It is obviously impossible to accumulate this thing in advance, relying on the grey industry chain in the middle. This smuggling and grey industry chain is not visible, and it works like a Hollywood spy film.
Take the TI MSP430 microcontroller in the United States as an example. After it was produced from a factory in Texas, it was first sold to a "trading company" in the United States.
Later, the U.S. company followed the normal way of appearance, turning the hand to the sale of single-chip machines to an electronics wholesaler outside the U.S.
Until then, all trading paths are still the normal channels, but from the wholesaler here, a lot of things start to go different paths.
The wholesalers wiped out the models on the chip a little, then placed the label "Industrial Control Accessories" and sent it directly to a small workshop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
This small workshop was packaged with "home appliance repair parts" written on it, and it was transported to Kazakhstan by land. Finally, a middleman in Kazakhstan drove directly across the Russian border and quietly sent to the military city of Yekaterinburg!
Along the way, the chip passed through dozens of hands, many of which are not formal procedures, so every hand will basically delete one logistics record.
In the end, chip manufacturers have to trace their origins in three or four countries, and some of them have no logistics records at all.
So don’t say the West has regulated, that the U.S. distributors themselves can’t find where their products are sold!
And not only are the Americans doing this business, but Turkey and the UAE also have a piece of it.
Turkish merchants, in large quantities purchased Intel's smart processors, then did not make any modifications, directly replaced a "computer accessories" tariff note, then shipped from Istanbul, via the Caspian Sea directly to Russia.
At the heart of this whole grey industry chain is Dubai in the UAE. Japanese capacitors, German Bosch sensors, U.S. electronic chips, and even Taiwan Accumulator semiconductors, which are clearly on the sanctions list, can get a “exempt certificate” as soon as they reach the electronic market in Dubai!
More people break the eye is, someone specialized in the "part washing" business, put military-grade parts on civilian labels, then forged an export document, the price can be sold three times!
A man doing an e-business in Dubai revealed that by 2023, the whole 50 containers will be sold to Russia through his reverse hand chip!
The key is that these "customers" can generally pay a high deposit, so these dealers never ask about the use of parts, will generally be prompted by customers to "drive"!
The most interesting thing is that the key core node in this industrial chain is Singapore.
As one of the world's largest semiconductor packaging testing centers, many Western chips here have been "mispatched" to Russia after completing the final process!
The key is this violation of the sanctions agreement. When the U.S. Department of Commerce came to the door, the explanation of Singaporean companies was logistics errors, and then they lost some money. The key compensation is simply nine Niu Yi drops compared with the benefits of transit.
Ineffective sanctions
In October 2023, German Prime Minister Scholz visited Ukraine when Zelensky solemnly promised to strengthen sanctions against Russia.
But a few days later, when Ukraine dismantled a Russian missile, the German-made Bosch sensors were dismantled from it, and the date of production of the sensors was clear, precisely the day after Scholz visited Ukraine!
After the incident, the German government announced that it would censor Bosch's exports, but Bosch said it had no illegal actions, after all, the sensors were sold to Turkey.
The same thing happened in the United States, with the U.S. Senate holding a hearing, and lawmakers holding a dismantling report to question the Texas Instruments CEO, asking him to explain how his chip ran into the Russian missile!
The CEO is also welcome. He jokingly said that he didn't know either. Maybe someone bought it to make a "children's toy"? This is really irritating. Whose toys use industrial-grade chips that are resistant to high temperature and electromagnetic interference?
To put it bluntly, the sanctions not only failed to cut off the source of Russia's parts, but instead allowed Russia's military production to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Previously, the Russian military built a "caliber" cruise missile, which used pure military accessories for production costs up to $500,000.
According to data from the early 2025s, the Russian military could produce 60 cruise missiles, five Iskander ballistic missiles and two Kinsar hypersonic missiles a month.
While Ukraine has a Western-aided "Patriot" air defense system "IRIS-T" that can intercept a Russian missile, it costs an interceptor bomb of $300,000.
When the war is intense, there are dozens of interceptor bombs to be consumed a day. That is, Russia will spend $3 million in a battle and Ukraine will spend $10 million!
This puts the entire West in a difficult situation, either closing one eye and looking at the parts they manufacture, assembling into Russian missiles.
Either simply strengthen sanctions and ban the sale of civilian parts that may be used in the military.
This would inevitably affect domestic companies, such as Texas Instruments, Bosch Germany, Sony Japan, with billions of dollars of sales annually in the civil market.
The strong strength of these large enterprises, coupled with the upstream and downstream industrial chains, can even influence government decision-making. If the government really imposes a comprehensive embargo, I'm afraid that the leaders will face the risk of being impeached and stepped down.
Therefore, many sanctions orders can only stay on the basic discussion, and can not really be delivered at all. For example, when the 19th round of EU sanctions discussions against Russia, it has been a row for more than a month, but in the end there has been no result, and eventually even the draft discussion has been cancelled.
In the final analysis, Germany is afraid of losing its electronic component export market, France is worried about the impact on the automobile industry chain, and Italy is directly opposed to strengthening semiconductor control. No one wants to affect their own economy, so it's a ghost if this kind of sanctions scheme can be discussed.
On the other hand, the same is true for the United States. Although the Ministry of Commerce added hundreds of embargoed parts, at the end of last year, the U.S. customs seized a batch of "industrial sensors" on the Mexican border. When they were disassembled, they were all used for Russian missiles.
After the investigation found that the source was a small company in the United States of California, when the investigation, the owner also believed that the batch of sensors was sold to "South American farmers."
In the end, there are no real winners as long as there is war, but there will always be intermediaries who steal the difference.
Sanctions can never really solve the problem, and in the face of interests, what sanctions and positions really do not matter.
The theme of today's world is peace and development, and those who double the war can only be eaten back by the war in the end!
References:
"67% of these Russian military weapons samples are foreign parts from the United States" Reference news 2023-08-15
EU temporarily cancelled discussions on new round of sanctions against Russia 2025-09-16
EU temporarily cancelled discussions on draft new round of sanctions against Russia