At the start of the full-scale invasion, the West restricted Russia's access to CNC machines necessary for producing any weapons: drones, rockets, artillery. Kyiv's allies expected the depletion of Russian weapon stocks, but China came to Russia's aid, explains Denys Hutyk, Executive Director of ESCU, in his column for NV Business.
Beijing has been helping and continues to help Moscow obtain machines through several methods: re-export through Chinese companies, production of СNС machines by subsidiaries of Western manufacturers at factories in China, and the supply of Chinese machines made with Western components. According to ESCU, China accounts for 80-90% of the machines imported by Russia in 2023 and early 2024.
Stopping the supply of advanced CNC machines to Russia will require enhanced control and coordination of Kyiv's partners at several levels:
- closing loopholes in sanction lists to prevent Russia from quickly replacing intermediaries after each sanction package;
- unifying sanction regimes among countries to avoid creating hubs for circumventing sanctions;
- strengthening control over subsidiaries in China by introducing special monitoring systems to prevent re-export of products to Russia;
- increasing the responsibility of manufacturers by introducing fines and other penalties for those who allow sanctions to be bypassed by controlling the end users of their products;
- expanding control over critical technologies by ensuring strict access control to them by Western corporations.
The full version of Denys' column is already available on NV Business.