KYIV -- Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Western nations have accused China of supplying Moscow with microchips and other critical dual-use technologies that are “powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression.”
In response, Washington and Brussels have hit hundreds of Chinese companies and individuals with sanctions in a pressure campaign to stem the technology flow to the Kremlin’s war machine.
But left untouched by these Western sanctions are some two dozen Chinese companies supplying Russia with gallium, germanium, and antimony -- key elements found in the drones and missiles that Moscow is using to pummel Ukraine.
An investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, has found that these Chinese companies are feeding these critical minerals to Russia’s military-industrial complex, including the state-owned conglomerate Rostec, which says it provides nearly 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.
The Chinese Sellers
These Chinese suppliers of critical minerals to Russia identified by Schemes include Yunnan Lincang Xinyuan Germanium Industry, whose largest stakeholder is Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member Bao Wendong. Its minority shareholders are two firms with state capital.
Another Chinese company supplying germanium, gallium, and antimony to Russia is VITAL Technology Group, a group of Chinese companies with around 25-percent ownership by Chinese state structures.
A third is Hynhe Technology, which is 10-percent owned by Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical, a leading Chinese state-owned company in the northwestern city of Hangzhou.
Among the recipients of these Chinese metals is a Japanese-owned Russian firm that has sold silicon wafers to Russian manufacturers of microelectronics for weapons, customs and tax records reviewed by Schemes show. Japan has coordinated with Washington and Brussels on its own sanctions targeting Russian aggression.
Following Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the United States and the EU imposed restrictions on exports of gallium, germanium, and antimony to Russia. But China is not a party to Western sanctions targeting Moscow, meaning their effectiveness is limited.
“If there is direct cooperation between a Chinese and a Russian company, then the sanctions of Western partners do not directly affect this. They can continue to do what they do among themselves,” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy's sanctions policy commissioner, Vladyslav Vlasyuk, told Schemes.
Vlasyuk added, however, that sanctions nonetheless play an important role in complicating the Russian military’s supply chain.
Conventional And Nuclear Weapons
Many countries across the world -- including the United States and EU member nations -- maintain reserves of gallium, germanium, and antimony due to their importance in microelectronics and military applications.
“These are all elements that are parts of any electronic systems…and even more so in a war zone, in military facilities, in any kind of defense system,” Tetyana Solomakha, a senior avionics 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. A drone without a flight controller and without this microprocessor simply will not fly,” Anton Pobuta, founder of the Ukrainian company Lab 418, which manufactures drones, told Schemes.
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.
But Beijing has secured a firm hold on the market for these minerals in Russia, where buyers include multiple companies already subjected to U.S. sanctions.
Amid the Western sanctions regime, China became the only foreign supplier of gallium and germanium to Russia in 2023 and remains Russia’s largest supplier of antimony, according to Russian customs data obtained by Schemes.
The Rostec-linked companies through which Chinese rare minerals end up in the Russian defense sector include Germanium JSC, a direct Rostec subsidiary, and a private company called Germanium and Applications, which actively does business with Rostec.
Records reviewed by Schemes show that Germanium and Applications in turn supplies Chinese rare metals to companies that include the Urals Optical and Mechanical Plant, a manufacturer of optical equipment for Russian military jets 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. Gallium is used to stabilize the plutonium in atomic bombs.
Both gallium and germanium are used in technology critical for Russian weapons, including laser guidance systems like those used in the Orlan-30 unmanned reconnaissance drone, which Moscow has deployed in Ukraine.
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
Records reviewed by Schemes also show that a Russian subsidiary of the Japanese company Ferrotec, which produces silicon parts for microchips, has both imported antimony from China and sold silicon wafers to Russian manufacturers of microelectronics for the military.
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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 in customs records obtained by Schemes came in February 2024, nearly two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
As recently as last year, Ferrotec Nord sold silicon wafers to a plant outside Moscow called Epiel, according to tax records obtained by Schemes.
Epiel is among the main suppliers of microchip components to the Rostec-owned firm Angstrem, which openly states that it works 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 company added that its volume of orders had quadrupled due to Russia’s “special military operation” -- the official Kremlin description of its war on Ukraine.
Schemes sought comment from the Japanese holding Ferrotec on its rare-mineral imports from China and work with suppliers to Russia’s military-industrial complex.
The company did not respond in time for publication.
