War in Ukraine: With international sanctions, producing its Iskanders missiles has become a real mission for Russia

With international sanctions, Russia is struggling to develop and produce its military arsenal. But Vladimir Putin's country would have found a way to circumvent them and obtain essential materials for the production of its missiles and planes.

Russia is not totally isolated from the world, thanks in particular to its links with China and North Korea, but almost. With international sanctions, Moscow encounters many difficulties in importing various components used in its military production but, nevertheless, manages to circumvent them and obtain Taiwanese "wafers" (very thin plate of semiconductor material), indicates The Insider.

An intermediary

Ukraine is defending itself as best it can against its enemy Russia, whether it is with the D system or by counting on the military and financial aid of its Western allies. Shells, fighter planes, missiles… Kiev's arsenal is diverse and the weapons are relatively recent.

For Russia, it is not the same. The country still uses vehicles and artillery dating from the Soviet era, therefore equipment that has already been used for several decades. As for its military production, here again, Vladimir Putin is running into a major problem: international sanctions prevent Russia from importing many materials that are essential to the manufacture of combat vehicles, such as Inskanders missiles or its planes.

Russia mainly needs microchips and to obtain them, it can no longer turn to the United States and is therefore turning instead to Pai Haung Technology, a wafer producer based in Taiwan that sends its products to Russia and Belarus, explains the magazine Géo.

However, The company exports these parts but does not produce them and is therefore a simple intermediary between “neutral countries such as Armenia or Kazakhstan to serve as bridges between the West and Moscow”. By successfully circumventing the sanctions, Vladimir Putin has not lost hope of winning this war that he launched on February 24, 2022.