kyiv hopes new European sanctions will deprive Russia of Western technology

Everytime that Russia attacks Ukrainian territory, the authorities of Kyiv find electronic components manufactured in Western countries in drones and missiles, a situation that Ukraine hopes that it will change with the approval, agreed this week by the Twenty-seven, of new measures of the EU to avoid it.

In addition to giving the green light to the opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine, the European Council managed to agree on the introduction of the twelfth sanctions package, which will arrive almost half a year after the previous one and will have as one of its priorities strengthening compliance of the measures already adopted.

While waiting for the details of this new round of sanctions to be known, the Council announced that it will expand the list of components and parts considered dual-use (susceptible to also being used in the military industry), whose export to Russia is prohibited.

According to Ukrainian Government advisor Anton Gerashchenko, the new measures will also force European companies to introduce a clause that prohibits those who buy their dual-use goods from re-exporting them to Russia.

kyiv has been calling on the EU for months to take new steps to reduce violations of existing sanctions, and has welcomed Thursday’s Council agreement as a step in the right direction to turn off the tap of Western technology to Russia.

European components in Russian weapons

While the heads of state and government of the EU were finalizing this and other decisions on the war in Brussels, anti-aircraft alarms were sounding in kyiv and in the Khmelnitsky region of western Ukraine.

Shortly after, strong explosions shook both regions and the Ukrainian military authorities announced the weapons used in the attack: Kinzhal supersonic missiles.

The Kinzhal are Russia’s most difficult missile to intercept.

Despite the many Western sanctions in force to prevent this, each Kinzhal has dozens of components manufactured in the United States and a smaller number of parts from Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Germany and even Spain, according to information published by Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine also finds components manufactured in countries that have imposed sanctions on the Russian military industry in drones, other types of missiles or radio-electronic equipment used by the Russian Army on the battlefield.

How are sanctions violated?

One of the most common ways that Russia circumvents sanctions is to import components that Europe and the United States cannot sell to it through third countries such as China, Armenia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.

In addition to agreeing at the European summit on an expansion of the list of parts and components considered likely to be used in the military industry, the European Union requested measures from some of the countries that re-export European dual-use goods to Russia.

On December 7, within the framework of the Sino-European summit, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, presented to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, a list of 13 Chinese companies that would be acquiring European dual-use products to end up sending them to China.

Late last year, the European Union’s special envoy for sanctions, David O’Sullivan, visited Astana to ask the Kazakh government to continue reducing the re-export to neighboring Russia of European goods included in sanctions on Moscow.

According to data from the Kazakh Government itself, imports of European products by the country have reached record levels since the beginning of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine.

Brussels suspects that the main reason is the systematic re-export to Russia of goods that Moscow can no longer buy from Europe, and is looking for formulas to prevent European trade relations with its non-EU partners from serving to continue financing the Kremlin’s war machine.