U.S. and E.U. Face Uphill Fight in Keeping Chips Out of Russia

“Now we are going to start seeing whether controls and sanctions will be effective,” Mr. Spleeters said.

The parent company of the firm that designed the drone, the Kalashnikov Group, a major Russian weapons manufacturer, has publicly challenged the West’s technology restrictions.

“It is impossible to isolate Russia from the entire global electronic component base,” Alan Lushnikov, the group’s president, said in a Russian language interview last year, according to a translation in a report from the Center for Strategic and International Relations, a think tank. “It’s a fantasy to think otherwise.”

That quote included “some bluster,” Gregory Allen, one of the report’s authors, said at an event in December. But, he added, “Russia is going to try and do whatever it takes to get around these export controls. Because for them, the stakes are incredibly, incredibly high.”

As the documents from the March meeting show, U.S. and European officials have become increasingly concerned that Russia is obtaining American and European goods by rerouting them through Armenia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/business/economy/us-russia-chips-sanctions.html