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full screenMany Russian weapons contain foreign components, despite current export bans. Image from a previous Russian missile attack on the city of Kryvyi Rih. Photo: Ukrainian Emergency Service Via AP/TT
Microchip and camera lenses for surveillance drones – manufactured in countries outside of Russia.
That’s some of the things that a group of forensics in Kiev finds in the rubble of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine – despite current export bans.
Slowly and methodically, a group of forensics examines the remnants of a Russian missile attack that were carried to a research facility on the outskirts of Kiev.
Among the charred rubble in the facility’s courtyard, the group is looking for traces of components sold by other countries to Russia – despite current export bans.
So far, Ukrainian investigators have identified technology and components from a large number of countries – including Turkey, Kazakhstan and China.
One of the finds was hidden in an engine of an Iranian Shahed drone, found after a Russian raid in the Kiev area. When the engine was disassembled, forensics found a carburettor – marked with the text ‘Made in Ireland’.
Foreign microchips and camera lenses for surveillance drones have also been found among the findings dug out of the rubble.
Removes marking on microchip
According to Oleksiy, one of the Ukrainian forensic scientists, the Russians sometimes removed the markings on the microchips to hide where they came from. But it is pointless, he notes.
– If there are thousands of these microchips and they remove some of them – what difference does it make?, says Oleksij.
After the painstaking work, the foreign components are registered in a database. If foreign technology has been used in attacks that have resulted in civilian casualties, it is investigated as war crimes.
450 foreign-made components
It is also far from the first time that foreign components have been found in the Russian arsenal – despite the technology export ban imposed by Western countries shortly after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to a 2022 study by the British think tank Rusi, Russia’s military systems contained 450 unique foreign components.
Among other things, it was about drones, cruise robots and anti-aircraft systems, which were manufactured with the help of foreign semiconductors, microprocessors and signal processors.