This content was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
European countries have accused China of providing Moscow with computers and other crucial dual-use systems that are “powering Russia’s brutal conflict of anger” since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years back.
In a push to stop the flow of technology to the Kremlin’s conflict equipment, Washington and Brussels have issued sanctions against hundreds of Chinese businesses and individuals.
However, some two hundred Chinese companies that supply Russia with chromium, tungsten, and antimony, which are crucial components found in the robots and weapons that Moscow is using to annihilate Ukraine, are unaffected by these Western sanctions.
An , research by Schemes,  , the investigative system of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, has found that these Taiwanese companies are feeding these important minerals to Russia’s military-industrial challenging, including the state-owned company Rostec, which says it provides almost 80 percent of the weapons the Kremlin is deploying in Ukraine.
According to records obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project ( OCCRP ) and reviewed by Schemes, at least a third of these suppliers are partially owned by the Chinese government, which , publicly denies , having “fanned fire or fueled the flames” of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A Japanese-owned Russian company that has sold silicon wafers to Russian microelectronics manufacturers for arms is one of the recipients of these Chinese metal, according to Schemes ‘ analysis of the tax and customs data. Japan and Brussels have worked together to implement its individual sanctions against Russian aggression.
Following Russia’s February 2022 war, the United States and the EU imposed limits on imports of chromium, gallium, and antimony to Russia. However, because China is not a member of the American restrictions against Moscow, they are only effective.
The sanctions placed on Western partners do not have a direct impact on a Chinese company’s primary cooperation with a Russian company. They can continue to do what they do among themselves”, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s restrictions plan director, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, told Schemes.
Vlasiuk added, nevertheless, that sanctions yet play an important role in complicating the Russian army’s supply chain.
Typical And Nuclear Weapons
Due to their significance in nanotechnology and military uses, many nations around the world, including the United States and EU member countries, maintain resources of chromium, tungsten, and arsenic.
” These are all factors that are components of any electrical systems…and even more so in a war zone, in defense features, in any kind of defense system”, Tetyana Solomakha, a senior aircraft lecturer at the Kyiv Aviation Institute, told Schemes.
Among the many military applications of these minerals are nuclear weapons, night-vision goggles, laser-guidance systems, drones, and infrared sensors for warships, aircraft, missiles, and tanks.
” These metals are used in microprocessors. Without a flight controller, and without this microprocessor,” a drone simply won’t fly,” said Anton Pobuta, founder of the Ukrainian company Lab 418, a maker of drones.
When China, the world’s largest producer of gallium, germanium, and antimony, banned its companies last month from supplying the three minerals to the United States in response to , new U. S. export controls , targeting Beijing, Chinese officials specifically , cited their military applications.
Beijing has since established a strong hold on the Russian market for these minerals, which include a number of businesses that have already been slapped with U.S. sanctions.
According to Russian customs data obtained by Schemes, China remained Russia’s largest supplier of antimony in spite of the Western sanctions regime, becoming the only foreign supplier of gallium and germanium to Russia in 2023.
Germanium JSC, a direct Rostec subsidiary, and a private company called Germanium and Applications, which actively conducts business with Rostec, are the Rostec-linked companies through which Chinese rare minerals are brought into the Russian defense sector.
According to records reviewed by Schemes, Germanium and Applications in turn provides Chinese rare metals to businesses like the Urals Optical and Mechanical Plant, a company that produces optical equipment for Russian military aircraft and helicopters.
The Urals Optical and Mechanical Plant, which is , under both U. S.  , and , EU sanctions,  , describes itself , as the “main suppliers of optical systems” for the Russian military.
Other Russian importers of Chinese rare minerals include the , U. S. sanctioned Enkor Grupp, an electronics manufacturer whose plant , received a visit , from Russian President Vladimir Putin last year, and Cryotrade Engineering, a company that has also been , sanctioned by Washington , and which works with Rostec and other firms in the Russian military industry.
Public procurement records show that Cryotrade Engineering, an importer of Chinese gallium, does business with multiple , Russian research institutes , under U. S. sanctions, including the Kurchatov Institute, a nuclear-weapons developer headed by a close associate of Putin. The plutonium in atomic bombs is stabilized using gallium.
Galileometric and germanium are both employed in technology important to Russian weapons, including laser guidance systems like those found in the Russian-deploying Orlan-30 unmanned reconnaissance drone.
The Russian Defense Ministry , boasted , in November that the Orlan-30’s laser designator rangefinder “makes it possible to accurately aim a guided munition, whether it is an adjusted aerial bomb or an adjusted artillery shell, at a target”.
Japan’s Supply-Chain Link
Additionally, according to records reviewed by Schemes, a Russian subsidiary of the Japanese firm Ferrotec, which exports silicon from microchips, has both imported antimony from China and sold silicon wafers to Russian military manufacturers.
The subsidiary, Moscow-based Ferrotec Nord, has imported antimony over the past four years from companies within VITAL Technology Group, a Chinese conglomerate with around 25-percent ownership by Chinese state entities.
The most recent of these listed shipments obtained by Schemes in customs records occurred in February 2024, almost two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
According to tax records obtained by Schemes, Ferrotec Nord sold silicon wafers to an Epiel plant outside of Moscow as recently as last year.
Epiel is one of the principal manufacturers of microchip components for Angstrem, which openly claims to work with Russian arms manufacturers.
In Russian civil litigation in November 2023, Angstrem stated that it supplies microchips and semiconductor devices to the Russian Defense Ministry, state space agency Roskosmos, and sanctioned Russian arms manufacturer Uralvagonzavod, among other weapons producers.
The Russian-led” special military operation” — the Kremlin’s official description of its conflict with Ukraine — had quadrupled the company’s volume of orders, it added.
Schemes contacted the Japanese holding company Ferrotec to request comment on its work with suppliers to Russia’s military-industrial complex and its rare-mineral imports from China.
The company did not respond in time for publication.
