A new Ukrainian study on imported equipment used for Russian weapons manufacturing says that the People’s Republic of China is Russia’s best source of high-tech machine tools for arms production, but far from the only one.
Companies in ten other countries besides China – most openly opposed to supporting the Kremlin war machine, and more than a few NATO members – also have sent Russia hundreds of advanced milling machines, lathes, heat treatment chambers and high-tech optical polishers that are now helping the Kremlin churn out weapons, a study published on Wednesday by Ukraine’s national military intelligence agency, HUR, said.
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The HUR report said Ukrainian intelligence operatives have identified 1,158 individual critical machine tools that were imported into the Russian Federation during 2024 and that are currently at work helping manufacture tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles, artillery, drones and artillery ammunition, or components for those war weapons.
Two of the Kremlin’s biggest arms manufacturers, the Nizhniy Tagil-headquartered Uralvagonzavod and the Moscow-headquartered Almaz-Antey, were identified as the main beneficiaries of foreign-made arms production equipment imported into Russia over the year.
Almaz-Antey is one of Russia’s leading aerospace and defense companies. Among other products it manufactures precision-guidance technologies, anti-aircraft systems, cruise missiles, radars, drones and artillery systems.
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Uralvagonzavod is the world’s biggest tank manufacturer. Other products include self-propelled howitzers, infantry fighting vehicles, remote-control turrets and automatic cannon.
Ukrainian intelligence identified 167 other arms production facilities inside Russia operating imported advanced machine tools to manufacture military equipment or materials, the report said.
The HUR report said that during 2024, Chinese manufacturers Teenking CNC, Weihai, Jiangsu J&H Industries, Acter Enterprises and Wuxi Wawe Intelligent Equipment, or their intermediaries, delivered machine tools or milling equipment to Russia that is now in use at the Uralvagonzavod works in tank production.
Per the HUR analysis, advanced Chinese production equipment in use at Uralvagonzavod include water jet cutting machines, radial drilling machines, horizontal milling machines, grinding machines, and thermal cutting machines. Among other applications, all these machine tools are used for production of metal components to military specs.
A Kyiv Post review of Uralvagonzavod and Russian state media content confirmed China-manufactured machine tools, primarily high-tech lathes, were present on the factory shop floor, consistent with the HUR report.
Beijing’s longstanding official position on the Russo-Ukraine War is that China supports Ukrainian territorial integrity but is neutral in the conflict, and that it will neither ship weaponry nor assist the war efforts of either country.
China’s Foreign Ministry, in a March 2024 statement, said that Moscow and Beijing “have chosen a path of ‘non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party’ in developing their relations.”
The Ukrainian report said that all Russian milling equipment acquisitions from the People’s Republic of China, and from some other vendors as well, were paid through the Shanghai branch of VTB bank using Chinese yuan. This payment method bypasses practically all international sanctions on Russia, which are tied to US dollar transfers.
An international coalition led by the US from 2022-2024 has slapped down increasingly severe sanctions on Moscow intended, among other objectives, to block Russian access to high-tech arms manufacturing machinery. The US, in May, sanctioned a reported more than 300 “targets” in China and six other countries thought by Washington to be helping Russia evade sanctions and produce high-tech arms.
Once in effect, any company worldwide trading with a company on the US target list could be blacklisted by the US and its allies as well.
None of the Chinese firms sanctioned by the US in that May sanctions order was among the companies identified by HUR as having delivered milling machinery to Russia in 2024.
According to the Ukrainians’ research, countries not friendly with Moscow also have allowed hundreds of high-tech machine tools suitable for production of modern military equipment to enter Russia in the past 12 months.
The report said that the Austrian machine high-tech tool producer EMCO has been a critical source of manufacturing machinery for Almaz-Antey, having delivered either directly or through a middleman vertical machining equipment and horizontal lathes now in use producing anti-aircraft missile systems, air defense and missile defense systems, and radars for the Russian military.
NATO nation companies with equipment identified by Ukraine as manufacturing weapons in Russia currently included Bonetti Cutting Solutions (Italy); Hermie, Rohde & Schwartz, Finetech GMBH, ISOG Technology and Schuler (Germany); Benmak Makine and Inductotherm Group (Turkey); CETOS, TDZ Turn, Toshulin and TOS Celavovice (Czech Republic) and Optical Gauging Products and Lapmaster Wolters (USA).
Companies from non-NATO states with milling equipment currently operating inside Russian weapons factories include DMG Mori Seiki, Nippon Avionics, IMV and ESPEC (Japan); Grindex (Serbia); Kent Industrial, Jainnher, Topking Technology and E-Machinery and SANCO (Taiwan); and Trimos SA (Switzerland), the report says.
The report says about one in five of the machines Ukraine has identified as illicitly shipped to Russia for arms manufacturing was shipped with a unique serial number by which supply chains might be tracked, and middleman companies enabling sanction bypassing identified and punished.
The Ukrainian report called on governments with companies producing high-tech milling machinery to tighten tracking of export products and to invoke an across-the-board ban of re-export to Russia from third-party states like Belarus, Iran, and North Korea. Banks in exporting countries should assist by providing law enforcement data on intermediate owners of the exported machine tools, HUR said.
Manufacturers should install GPS trackers in machine tools sent for export and should conduct on-site inspections of the equipment as part of mandatory maintenance, the report said. Kill switches that would enable a producer to shut down equipment used in violation of export terms should be installed in critical manufacturing systems, the HUR statement recommends.
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