Western Chip Sanctions Hit Russia's Military

The Russian army is heavily dependent on semiconductor chips from Intel, AMD and Nvidia.

The Russian Armed Forces are heavily dependent on Western semiconductor technologies and are therefore heavily affected by U.S. and EU sanctions. The German weekly Bild am Sonntag reported this on Sunday, June 1, citing internal documents from the Russian company Scientific-Production Association of Computing Systems (NPO VS), which develops software and manufactures equipment for the Russian army in particular, DW.

As Bild am Sonntag notes, the Russian army is alarmed by its dependence on Western chips produced by companies such as Intel, AMD and Nvidia. "Russian chips are inferior to their competitors in performance and energy efficiency, they are also significantly more expensive," an internal email from an employee of the Armed Forces NGO said. According to him, Russia is at least ten years behind its competitors.

Because of US and EU sanctions, Russia cannot buy semiconductor equipment directly and is forced to acquire it through workarounds. Computing Systems uses an extensive system of intermediaries for this purpose, the German weekly notes.

Internal documents of the company also show that Russia is trying to weaken its dependence on American chips. Manufacturers from China, in particular, are being considered as an alternative. However, the management of the Armed Forces NGO refuses this procurement option as well, because in such a case, as one of the reports says, "a supplier from one potentially hostile country (the US) would be replaced by a supplier from another potentially hostile country (the PRC)."

The dataset analyzed by Bild am Sonntag consists of 1.1 million documents, including emails, contracts and presentations, some of which are stamped "top secret."

In September last year, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said that 60 percent of all foreign components for Russian weapons come through China. According to Vlasyuk, important components used in reconnaissance equipment, drones and missiles are also shipped from the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and other Western countries.

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