WARSAW – The Kh-101 cruise missile that hit a children’s hospital in Kiev in early July perfectly illustrates the ability of the Russian defense industry to circumvent Western attempts to restrict the supply of key components.

The July 8 attack, which killed two people and damaged large parts of the clinic’s surrounding buildings, which were treating about 600 patients, sparked international outrage.

However, Russia has “deployed more than 700 guided bombs, more than 170 attack drones of various types and almost 80 missiles against Ukraine since the beginning of this week,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The days when Western military officials reported that Russian military production capacity was insufficient to sustain the war in Ukraine, or when a Ukrainian official said that Russian attacks would soon stop due to a lack of ammunition, are long gone.

The Financial Times reported, without naming sources, that Russia is now producing eight times as many Kh-101s as it did before its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Experts consulted by AFP declined to confirm the figures but all stressed that Russia can build more of these crucial cruise missiles.

“I would say the real number could be even higher,” said Vladislav Inozemtsev, a Russian economist living in exile. He estimates that Russia will make 700 to 750 this year and that production could reach 1,000 units by 2025.

“In April 2024, Ukrainian sources reported a monthly production of 40 Kh-101 missiles,” much higher than the 56 produced in all of 2021, a Western arms source said.

However, the control systems of these missiles require many components that are made in countries that support Kiev and have imposed sanctions against Russia.

According to the official website war-sanctions.gur.gov.ua, AMD memory cards, Texas Instruments microcircuits and Dutch-made Nexperia buffer chips were found in the debris from the Kh-101 attacks.

“Not all electronic components in Russian missiles are of military grade. Many, if not most, of them are of consumer or industrial grade and still available to Russia on the world market,” said Pavel Luzin, a specialist in Russian defense policy.

“In addition, there was a warehouse in Russia for electronic components manufactured before 2022.”

‘No sign of vulnerability’

With the help of friendly countries, Russia has set up trading companies and “shows no signs of vulnerability in its supply chains,” an industry source said.

“First, there are the Chinese, who supply the Russians with all kinds of dual-use products that are successfully used by the military industry,” Mr. Inozemtsev said.

The industry source added: “The main foreign components found on the Kh-101 wrecks today are American or Taiwanese commercially available processors, purchased by Russian trade missions in embassies abroad or through front companies.”

Some countries have become important hubs.

In a report published in late 2023, the British research institute Rusi said that “faced with the loss of access to vital supply lines, Russia adapted by rerouting trade flows through friendly jurisdictions and neighbouring countries, often using complex networks of front companies to evade scrutiny”.

“For example, in 2022, Armenia’s microelectronics imports from the US and EU increased by more than 500 and 200 percent respectively, with most of this later being re-exported to Russia.”

Rusi also noted that the value of microelectronics exports from Kazakhstan to Russia increased from about $250,000 in 2021 to more than $18 million in 2022.

But sometimes these sales are made directly through Western countries, Rusi said. An example of this is the Russian company Compel JSC, which buys products from Germany.

A Stuttgart court on July 17 sentenced a 59-year-old Russian-German man to nearly seven years in prison for supplying 120,000 parts and other equipment to Russia between January 2020 and May 2023.

“There is little that can be done to stop these flows,” Mr Inozemtsev said. “The only effective thing would be to consider sanctions against Western semiconductor manufacturers to force them to screen their customers better. But such measures would be too painful for Western companies.” AFP