Journalists of the Dutch NOS and Nieuwsuur published a joint investigation about the way how russia receives microcircuits from the Netherlands for weapons production. Chips manufactured by the Dutch NXP and Nexperia companies were found, in particular, in the on-board equipment of russia’s cruise missiles, Ka-52 attack helicopters, "one of the types of self-propelled guns" (probably the 2S19 Msta-SM2) and one of the Iranian-made kamikaze drones. According to RUSI estimates, Dutch-origin chips cover at least 10 out of 27 critical positions for russians of "dual-purpose" electronics.
The authors of the investigation say that at least "several hundred deliveries" of electronics from the Netherlands in 2022 were addressed to three enterprises of russia’s military industrial complex, which were on the sanctions list of the West. But then it is worth understanding that russia imports literally several million chips every month, some of them eventually "rolls into the hands" of russia’s defense industry.
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The authors of the joint investigation by NOS and Nieuwsuur claim that only in November 2022, russia imported 2 million chips, of which 60 thousand, or only 6% of the total number, are Dutch NXP and Nexperia. It’s still unknown what part of the electronics from this amount was used on production to continue the war against Ukraine, as well as what part of them was used for the production of civilian products.
Investigators are sure that the flow of electronics imports to the russian federation remains consistently high, despite Western sanctions. At the same time, the role of "intermediary" in such supplies for the Kremlin was assumed by China: they say, importers from the People's Republic of China simply buy up all this electronics in gigantic volumes, which then "migrate" to the territory of russia. At the same time, in order to carry out the delivery covertly, the chips can go in general as "ordinary" cargo of international postal operators.
Illegal suppliers of electronics take advantage by the fact that in order to check possible circumvention of sanctions, bureaucrats have to perform several dozen checks on just one shipment in order to block it. Also, they take advantage by the fact that some of the "gaskets" may still not be on the EU sanctions list.
The experts and business representatives of the Netherlands interviewed by the NOS and Nieuwsuur investigators admit that more can be done here so that russians get less electronics for their military equipment. For example, Dutch companies can check the buyers of their goods more thoroughly. And if the "gaskets" from China violate the terms of the contracts and resell microcircuits to russia, then at least they should simply stop these contracts.
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