Major companies from Japan, the United States and Taiwan are among the top suppliers of electronic components that Russia has used on five types of fighter jets since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Schemes – Investigative Section reveals of the Ukrainian service RFE/RL.
The imports from these manufacturers were not direct, but the fact that the parts reached Russia demonstrates the vulnerabilities of the sanctions system imposed on Moscow by Western countries.
And Kiev – which is weakened by a lack of weapons and ammunition as Russian forces advance, hitting soldiers, civilians and vital infrastructure – has been complaining about this for some time.
Moreover, Ukraine has emphasized that stopping imports of these dual-use products is crucial to defending against Russian aggression.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 14 that “opinions do not stop the production of missiles and drones used in war.”
Schemes journalists have obtained a list of 2,000 electronic components that Ukrainian intelligence says were used by Russia on five types of Sukhoi fighter jets involved in attacks on Ukraine between the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, and the end of 2023.
Journalists used the list and public data on imports and discovered two middlemen from European Union countries – Cyprus and Hungary – who sent electronic components used in the manufacture of Sukhoi jets to Russian defense contractors.
The list, provided by a Ukrainian intelligence source that monitors imports by Russian contractors, contains electronic components used for the “brains” of five models of Sukhoi military aircraft regularly used by Russia in attacks on Ukraine.
These are: Su-27SM3, Su-30SM, Su-34, Su-35S and Su-57.
The components are responsible for the navigation of Russian aircraft and the guidance system of missiles and bombs, as well as radio-electronic warfare with Ukrainian forces and communication with control centers.
For example, says aviation expert Valeri Romanenko, these are radars that can simultaneously identify and target dozens of locations more than 300 kilometers away, while monitoring the plane’s location relative to enemy aircraft or anti-aircraft defenses.
These systems, built “mainly with Western electronics,” allow the Russians “to inflict significant damage on us,” Romanenko says.
Top five
Schemes journalists studied the list together with NAKO , the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission, a Kyiv-based non-profit organization that monitors corruption cases in the area of Ukrainian national security.
According to Schemes’ calculations, the Japanese company Murata , known for radio technologies and filters, manufactured the most components used by Russia in the planes – 218 of the 2,000 on the list.
Data from Russian customs, analyzed by NAKO, show that Russian imports of Murata products, through intermediaries, increased in 2022 by 38% compared to the previous year, reaching 8.5 million dollars. In 2023 they were $9.6 million.
In second place, with 176 products, is the American company Texas Instruments . In June 2023, RFE/RL reported that Russia makes regular imports from Texas Instruments and Analog Device, another American company, through companies in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Analog Devices, an American company, and its subsidiary, Maxim Integrated, are ranked 3rd and 5th, with 163 and 60 products.
From the company Kemet, owned in Taiwan and based in the USA, 71 products come – and the company is in 4th place, I confirm the analysis of Schemes.
The list also contains other European companies , as well as other American and Japanese electronics and semiconductor manufacturers.
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Imports were not direct purchases from manufacturers but, as the international trade database Import Genius demonstrates, were made through intermediaries.
Schemes reporters have reached out to Murata, Texas Instruments (TI), Analog Devices (ADI), Kemet and Maxim Integrated for comment. Kemet and Maxim did not answer.
Analog Devices said it “fully complied with export laws.”
“ADI has robust internal policies, controls and practices to ensure that sales of ADI products comply with export control laws in the US and other countries where ADI operates,” a spokesperson said via email.
“Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in accordance with US and EU sanctions, ADI has ceased commercial activities in Russia and the Russian-backed regions of Ukraine and Belarus and has promptly instructed all of our distributors to stop supplying our products to these regions”, said the spokesperson.
A Texas Instruments spokesperson told us on April 30 via email that “the company opposes the use of our chips in Russian military equipment and the illegal diversion of our products to Russia.”
“Any shipment of TI chips to Russia is illegal and unauthorized,” the spokesperson added.
“We ask our distributors and customers to comply with export control laws and take action – if we find they don’t, we may end up terminating contracts,” said the spokesperson, who did not name a company in the case.
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Without directly responding to the request, two other companies condemned the sale of their products to Russia.
There is an undated statement on Murata’s website , in which the company states that its policy is to comply with “the export control laws with all regulations of each country in which Murata operates.”
The company is asking customers outside of Japan to ensure that its products are not used for weapons of mass destruction, including missiles, or for “conventional weapons or products thereof.”
In December 2023, Analogue Devices (ADI) sent a statement to Bloomberg News saying that “any post-sanctions shipments to these regions are in direct violation of our policies and are the result of unauthorized resale or diversion of ADI products.”
But the production of Sukhoi fighter jets continues.
For example, on April 5, Rostec, a sanctioned Russian state-owned defense conglomerate, announced the delivery of an unspecified number of Su-24s, described as “an important part of Russia’s strike power on the air front.”
Systema, the investigative newsroom of RFE/RL’s Russian service, studied customs data and found that between January 2022 and July 2023 , more than $8 million worth of aircraft parts were imported into Russia.
The most important importer of the components was Yakovlev, the manufacturer of Sukhoi aircraft.
How Russia gets what it needs
Schemes journalists and NAKO experts analyzed Russian import data from Import Genius, an online international trade database, and found that several companies from countries including China and Turkey exported, between February 2022 and July 2023, electronic components in Russia, components that are also on the list of the Ukrainian secret services.
The journalists investigated two of the companies registered in the European Union – which prohibits the avoidance of sanctions against Russia, but leaves enforcement to the responsibility of the 27 member states.
Noratec Holdings is a company owned by Vladimirs Boreckis, a Latvian citizen, and is registered in Cyprus, according to an international sanctions evasion investigation.
Matrix Metal Group , the company where Boreckis is general manager and sole shareholder, is registered in Hungary, a country whose government is critical of the European Union’s actions against Russia.
In the period 2021-2023, the two companies constantly shipped to a private Russian company, named Ekstion, electronic components that are on the list made by the Ukrainian secret services.
Eksiton , founded in June 2022, four months after the outbreak of the large-scale invasion, in the Moscow suburb of Ramenskoie, describes itself as a wholesaler of “industrial electrical equipment, machines, appliances and materials”.
Evidence indicates it is connected to fighter jet manufacturer Sukhoi.
Iuri Korcevshi, the person officially registered as the majority shareholder of the Eksiton company, was, until 2015, the co-owner of another company, which is also called Eksiton, but which is located in the city of Smolensk, in western Russia.
According to the Russian trade register, the second Eksiton is a supplier to Yakovlev, formerly Irkut, which makes Sukhoi fighter jets.
The company also supplies products to two other key suppliers of Yakolev – the Central Automation Design Bureau and the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant – as well as to other companies owned by Rostec.
Smolensk-based Ekstion also owns Display Component, another Smolensk-based Russian military contractor that has been sanctioned by Ukraine. Noratec and Matrix Metal Group regularly shipped electronic components to this company in 2021 and 2021-2023.
According to the Russian trade registry, before the 2022 campaign against Ukraine, Display Component supplied electronics to a private Russian research institute, Ekran, which develops anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems for planes and helicopters.
Display Component and the two Eksiton companies had connections with the family of Sergei Altuhov, a member of the State Duma – the Russian parliament, from the United Russia party. Members of the Altuhov family were, at various times, founders, owners or directors of these companies.
Smolensk-based Eksiton’s website is no longer accessible, but an archived version of it notes that the firm received “awards and letters of thanks” from the Russian Ministry of Defense for its contribution to the “common cause of the country’s defense”.
result
Texas Instruments representatives told RFE/RL that the firm has done a “thorough internal investigation” into sales to Eksiton, Matrix Metal Group and Noratec Holdings, and can confirm that “we have not sold any products to these companies and that we stopped in February 2022 sales to Russia”.
Schemes journalists emailed Boreckis regarding evidence of electronic component shipments to Russia via Noratec and Matrix Metal Group. They received no response.
On his LinkedIn profile, deleted after the Schemes article was published on the Ukrainian site on April 17, Boreckis describes himself as a “forward-looking business accelerator” with a background in financial technology. The profile, archived by Schemes, also says he is fluent in Russian and English and lives in Great Briania.
Neither Noratec nor Matrix were sanctioned for exporting electronic components to Russia.
On April 12, the European Council, the institution that sets European policy priorities, adopted a law that imposes criminal liability on individuals, companies and organizations that violate sanctions against Russia. There are other measures , by which individuals can receive sentences of at least five years in prison, and companies can be closed.
How a Russian manufacturer imported Western technical fighter jets despite US and EU sanctions
According to the regulation adopted in December 2023, companies registered in the European Union must insert a “No Russia” clause in contracts when doing business with non-EU partners, including for “advanced technology” with military applications.
Implementation depends on each country.
Ahia Zahrebelska of Ukraine’s National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, which monitors sanctions policy, believes that tougher measures by the EU on sanctions avoidance will not deter Russia.
Even if “one company that was useful to Russia” is sanctioned, she says, Russia can create “on the spot” another “ten companies that will do the same thing.”
However, the imposed sanctions are affecting the “delivery time” and possibly the quality of Russian military equipment, says NAKO’s Victoria Visnivska.
Article written by Elizabeth Owen, based on a report by Kyrylo Ovsyaniy of Schemes.
Newsessentials Blog 
Posted on June 26, 2024
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