Several Hong Kong-based companies are providing the Russian military machine with Western technology. An investigation was published in The New York Times.

The activities of these companies involve the purchase of millions of microchips and sensors that are not available to Russian military-technical companies under global sanctions.

The well-known names of these companies are Olax Finance and Rikkon Holding. They do not have large headquarters, and their offices look unoccupied. Yet these companies are an important link in the chain that connects American research laboratories to Chinese factories, Russian weapons manufacturers, and the battlefields of Ukraine.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the aggressor country has received about $4 billion worth of technology-related sanctioned goods. The analysis examined nearly 800,000 shipments of banned electronic goods to Russia since mid-2021.

For example, in the X-101 cruise missile that struck the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) were found. Their manufacturer was either AMD or Intel.

It is reported that in the last three months of 2023, Russia imported almost as many critical chips as in the same period in 2021.

At first, American manufacturers sell their products to international distributors, who then send the purchased goods to Russia.

China denies these facts. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated that it does not provide weapons or equipment to any party in the war in Ukraine.