How Russia procures Western technology for its weapons

Berlin A military treasure chest on the battlefield is how a Ukrainian security officer’s find, recently reported by Reuters, describes a black metal box that was inside an unexploded Russian 9M727 cruise missile.

The box is just one of numerous items collected by the Ukrainian military since the beginning of the war. These are microelectronics, special cameras, sensors, transmitters and receivers, converters, air wings, motors.

The man opened the box with a hunting knife. As with other finds, many of the chips, signal processors or other parts contained had a Cyrillic label – but it was surprising that some had well-known names such as Intel or Texas Instruments.

In the box from the 9M727 cruise missile, there were exactly 31 components that came from foreign production.

At least 450 Western-made parts