The drones came in swarms, more than 300 at a time. They pummeled Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, leaving destruction and death behind. Despite sweeping export controls, the deadly invaders are packed with Western microelectronics.
The troubling discovery does not mean Western companies are selling to Russia. Rather, it reflects systemic weaknesses in a global semiconductor supply chain that is dual‑use, opaque, and easily routed through third countries. Russia has worked hard to find these holes.
Ukrainian and independent technical inspections of downed Kh‑101, Iskander, Kalibr, and Kinzhal missiles have repeatedly found Western microcontrollers and memory, and power‑management ICs. A single KH-101 contained 31 foreign components, most originating from US, European, and Japanese companies. A detailed teardown of Russia’s new Geran‑5 drone found US chips from Texas Instruments, CTS Corporation, and Monolithic Power Systems, plus a German-made component from Infineon. These components are commercial or industrial‑grade dual‑use parts used in civilian electronics, which were originally exported legally to global markets.
Ukrainian experts estimate that roughly 70% of Western‑branded parts in these drones are genuine, produced legally for global markets. The rest come from grey channels, including over‑production at contract fabs and counterfeit devices.
After direct exports to Russia were restricted, Moscow shifted to re‑exports via intermediaries in countries such as Turkey, the UAE, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and China, where small trading firms route Western chips onward. Other Western commercial‑grade microcontrollers in guidance and navigation units can be bought on open markets and Chinese e‑commerce platforms.
These low‑to‑mid‑range processors are generic and fall outside narrow export control lists. They are used in countless civilian products; Russian or intermediary buyers purchase them in small batches under the guise of industrial or consumer applications and then divert them to the defense sector.
Western manufacturers sell huge volumes via independent distributors and online platforms. Once components leave first‑tier channels, end‑user visibility collapses, and due diligence is thin or non‑existent.
Russian engineers are also reportedly harvesting microcontrollers and memory chips from imported dishwashers, refrigerators, and other white goods. These appliances often reach Russia via parallel imports through Central Asian states, which have seen huge spikes in EU exports of electronics and appliances. Outsourced production in Asian fabs can allow unrecorded extra runs (“ghost shifts”) or leakage of surplus chips, which then appear on grey markets and are bought by intermediaries.
Such complex, fragmented supply chains are hard to police. Instead of just targeting Russian end consumers, enforcement must target “the entire supply chain of evasion” — intermediary firms, transit hubs, and banks that facilitate payments. Export control agencies, customs, financial crime units, and private compliance teams still operate largely in silos; they lack a common, real‑time view of suspicious counterparties and shipping patterns.
A shared database of high‑risk commercial components should be established. It could integrate Ukrainian forensic findings so that specific part numbers found in Russian systems are flagged in near real-time for enhanced scrutiny or licensing.
A transatlantic sanctions‑evasion task force should focus on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Turkey, the UAE, and similar hubs. It could wield a mix of secondary sanctions, trade‑finance restrictions, and positive incentives to push governments and local banks in these countries to police their traders, rather than relying only on diplomatic démarches.
Manufacturers also need to take additional responsibility. They should work to formulate harmonized “know‑your‑customer and distributor” obligations. Chipmakers should introduce secure provenance features (i.e., cryptographic IDs or attestation) for key product families repeatedly seen in Russian weapons, easing detection of illicit over‑production and grey‑market sales. White goods manufacturers should design boards that are difficult to reuse in weapons. These include secure boot features and layouts that prevent salvaging.
E‑commerce platforms and payment providers need to step up, too. They should flag and throttle bulk sales of frequently weaponized components to freight forwarders and shell companies in high‑risk states. If dozens of small orders of the same high‑end MCU or RF chip are sent to the same address in a sanctions‑sensitive hub, it should trigger enhanced checks.
If the US, Europe, and its allies treat chip diversion as a collective strategic problem — pooling data, tightening controls on known chokepoints, and enforcing responsibilities on industry — it can raise the cost and reduce the volume of Western technology that reaches the Kremlin’s war machine. Some leakage is inevitable. But Russia will have fewer drones available to wreak havoc on Ukraine.
Christopher Cytera CEng MIET is a senior fellow with the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a technology business executive with over 30 years’ experience in semiconductors, electronics, communications, video, and imaging.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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