Western sanctions on semiconductors hurting Russian army - media

This was reported with reference to 1.1 million documents, including emails, contracts and presentations, some of which are marked "top secret", analyzed by the Bild am Sonntag publication, DW reports.

Bild am Sonntag analyzed internal documents of the Russian-based Scientific and Production Association of Computing Systems (NVO OS), a software developer and equipment producer, including for the Russian armed forces.

Due to U.S. and EU sanctions, Russia cannot purchase semiconductor equipment directly, being forced to do so indirectly. In particular, the NVO OS employs an extensive system of intermediaries to this end, the German weekly notes.

“Russian chips are inferior to competitors in terms of performance and energy efficiency, they are also significantly more expensive,” says an internal letter from one of the NVO OS employees. He adds that the Russian Federation is at least a decade behind its competitors.

The company’s internal documents indicate that Russia is trying to reduce its dependence on American semiconductors. In addition, concerns are evident in the Russian army about its dependence on Western semiconductors, including Intel, AMD and Nvidia. Manufacturers from China are being considered as an alternative. However, the NVO OS management refuses this procurement option, since, as one of the reports says, in this case “a supplier from one potentially hostile country (the USA) would be replaced by a supplier from another potentially hostile country (the PRC)”.

As Ukrinform reported, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and the EU imposed export controls on dozens of goods, electronics, and technologies used in arms production.

Last year, Bloomberg reported that Moscow was actively using American electronics to manufacture weapons and devices for waging war against Ukraine.