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The investigation was prepared by the Economic Security Council of Ukraine together with the InformNapalm international intelligence community.
Instead of a Foreword
This is Berenne Alinovi. She has her own business in Barcelona, Spain. She sews cocktail and wedding dresses and creates jewelry with Swarovski crystals.
And this is Inna Soloshenko from Lebedyn, Sumy Oblast, in a wedding dress. She married Mykhailo in 2019. In 2020, the woman gave birth to their son Yefrem.
Recently, the life of the Soloshenko family was suddenly cut short. On March 12, 2022, a Russian tank fired point-blank at the car they were in.
But this might not have happened, in particular, if some foreign companies had not helped the Russian Federation to produce weapons circumventing the sanctions imposed back in 2014.
One of these companies, still working for the Russian military-industrial complex, is headed by Berenne’s husband, Roger Alinovi. Despite the sanctions, the Swiss company CODERE he manages continued to supply equipment to the sanctioned Elektromashina plant in Russia, which produces components for Russian tanks.
Unfortunately, this company is not alone. Dozens of Swiss, Italian, and German firms make deals with Russian defense companies through shell companies and circumvent sanctions. They are doing that to earn billions of dollars while Russian missiles and tanks are killing innocent Ukrainians.
Who Supplies the Equipment and to Whom
The Elektromashina plant, which Alinovi cooperates with, is located in Russian Chelyabinsk and is part of the Uralvagonzavod Corporation. The Uralvagonzavod, in its turn, is a daughter company of Rostekh, a giant Russian state conglomerate operating in the civil and military industry.
Now Uralvagonzavod is the only tank manufacturer in the Russian Federation. Elektromashina produces components for these tanks.
In 2014, after Russia’s war against Ukraine started, Uralvagonzavod fell under EU sanctions, like many other companies. European companies would have to withdraw from joint projects and break any business ties with these enterprises. However, many companies did not do so.
That’s why, back in 2016, Elektromashina bought new equipment – a thermal treatment line manufactured by the Swiss company CODERE SA. It was purchased for RUB 155.5 million through an intermediary, Galika-CTS company.
At first glance, it might seem that the Swiss company might not be aware of the end clients for their equipment because they entered into a contract with another company rather than the Russian defense enterprise.
However, this impression is wrong. The Swiss CODERE knew everything. The company announced cooperation with Elektromashina in 2013. It even held a conference with representatives of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Oboronprom Holding, the Russian embassy, and the business community of Switzerland.
In addition to CODERE, numerous other firms cooperate with the Russian defense industry. One of them is the Swiss GF Machining Solutions.
In 2018, the JSC Konstruktorskoe Buro Priborostroeniya (Instrument Design Bureau) in Tula received equipment worth more than RUB 722 million from the Swiss company GF Machining Solutions. In particular, the Russian company purchased 23 MIKRON HPM 600HD milling machines, 12 MIKRON HEM 500U milling machines, 1 AgieCharmilles FORM 20 die-sinking machine, and MIKRON HRM 1150U milling machine.
This Russian company designs weapons. For instance, the Bureau produced the Pantsir surface-to-air missile and gun systems, which Russia uses in the war against Ukraine. Also, the Bureau develops systems of high-precision weapons of surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, and air-to-surface classes and designs grenade launchers, sniper rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, pistols, and revolvers.
In 2017, Izhevsk Mechanical Plant in Udmurtia got an AgieCharmilles CUT 20 P wire-cutting EDM machine from the Swiss GF Machining Solutions for EUR 169,648.
This equipment also helped strengthen the aggressive Russian army because the Izhmekh plant produces 86% of all small arms in the Russian Federation, including the Makarov and Yarygin pistols. By the way, they were found in the town of Dymer, Vyshgorodsky district, Kyiv Oblast, after the withdrawal of Russian troops. The locals of the village spent 35 days under Russian occupation. People are still scouring the neighboring forests, looking for their missing relatives tortured by the Russian military.
Also, in 2018, the largest manufacturer of aircraft engines in the Russian Federation, PJSC ODK-UMPO (Ufa, Bashkortostan), received a universal grinding machine WALTER HELITRONIC MINI POWER for more than RUB 81 million from Walter, a German company.
By the way, in 2018, ODK-UMPO began developing an engine for the SU-57 fighter. In May 2022, Russian propagandists boasted of testing the fifth-generation Su-57 fighters in the war against Ukraine.
The Swiss manufacturer Fritz Studer AG also cooperates with Russia. In 2018, the company supplied two universal cylindrical grinding machines, Studer S21 CNC, to the largest aircraft and space engine building enterprise of the Russian Federation PJSC Kuznetsov in Samara. It cost more than RUB 316 million.
By order of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Kuznetsov produces engines for the Tu-160 White Swan strategic bombers, deeply modernized Tu-160M, Tu-95MS, and long-range Tu-22M3 aircraft. Now the Russians are actively using all these aircraft in the war in Ukraine.
And in 2019, the Swiss manufacturer fulfilled the order of the only company that produces missiles for the C-300 and C-400 anti-aircraft systems – JSC MMZ Avangard (Moscow). Russian troops near Kharkiv used those weapons – the S-400 and S-300 anti-aircraft missile divisions – in April 2022.
The Russian client got a precision CNC cylindrical grinding machine with the function of processing external and internal threads S30 worth over EUR 382,000 from the Swiss company.
In 2019, JSC NPP Kaluga Instrument-Making Plant Typhoon got a TNA 400 lathe worth EUR 260,000 from Index Traub, a German manufacturer. The Russian enterprise produces radar stations for surface ships of the Russian Navy and coastal missile systems. The Bal coastal missile system equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles is produced here. It is used for shelling Ukraine from Crimea.
The Russian JSC “Chepetsky Mechanical Plant” (Glazov, Udmurtia) received a Planomat HP 412 CNC profile grinding machine for more than RUB 41 million from the German manufacturer Blohm Jung GmbH in the same year.
The Chepetsk Mechanical Plant is part of Rosatom, whose employees took part in seizing the occupied Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant. The enterprise also occupies one of the critical positions in the process cycle for producing nuclear fuel based on natural uranium.
In the same year, the Italian manufacturer Hexagon Metrology S.p.A. sold a Micra Hexagon Metrology coordinate measuring machine worth over EUR 171,000 to the Russian JSC Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant KUPOL. KUPOL supplies the Russian Ministry of Defense with Tor air defense systems, which the Russians actively use in the war against Ukraine.
In 2018, the Swiss manufacturer Sylvac SA sold an optical measuring system, the Scan 52 model, worth almost RUB 3 million to the Russians. The customer is JSC Novosibirsk Ammunition Plant, which produces cartridges for small arms, including caliber 7.62×51.
The Tochnost (Precision) sniper rifles, which the Russian National Guard was armed with in 2017, have this caliber. According to Reuters, Vityaz, a special unit of the Russian National Guard, operated in Bucha. So, this Swiss company also contributed to the tragedy.
How Companies Circumvent Sanctions
Most of the aforementioned Russian enterprises are under sanctions. In particular, the sanctions lists include the Uralvagonzavod Corporation (which includes Elektromashina), JSC Instrument Design Bureau, Izhevsk Mechanical Plant (part of the Kalashnikov Concern), JSC Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant KUPOL, Ufa Motor-Building Production Association (ODK-UMPO, owned by United Engine-Construction Corporation JSC), Avangard MMZ JSC.
Despite this, Italian, Swiss and German companies keep cooperating with the Russian defense industry. But, of course, they do it through the Swiss shell company, Galika AG, rather than directly. This company’s director is Lino Derungs, a Swiss citizen. However, he has been doing business in Russia since the early 1990s.
Switzerland allegedly joined the sanctions against defense enterprises of the Russian Federation, which the US and the EU imposed due to the annexation of Crimea.
“But we do not want to be perceived as a country taking sides. Therefore, we usually introduce monitoring to ensure that Russia or Russian companies do not use Switzerland to circumvent EU sanctions. Conversely, we ensure that European companies or other entities do not use Switzerland to circumvent them,” Yves Rossier, the then Swiss Ambassador to the Russian Federation, explained the situation in 2018.
That same year, he promoted cooperation with representatives of Galika AG in the Perm Krai.
Galika AG sells equipment in the Russian Federation through numerous branches. One of them is Galika CTS. Until 2020, Evgeny Georgievich Polkanov was the director of Galika CTS. In 2014-15, he was the deputy director of Stankoprom Holding, a part of Rostekh. Thus, it becomes clear why the Swiss company cooperates with the Russian defense industry.
According to tender data, from 2016 to 2021, Galika CTS signed contracts worth RUB 1.4 billion with Russian clients. However, there may be many more of them because, after the sanctions were imposed in 2014-2015, most orders for defense enterprises of Rostekh were classified as secret.
You can, of course, assume that European equipment manufacturers did not know to whom they supplied their products. However, they definitely did.
For example, the Swiss manufacturer GF Machining Solutions became a member of the Russian-Swiss Competence Center in the field of micromachining technologies in June 2014.
Walter Maschinenbau (Germany), which supplied machine tools worth EUR 2.37 million to the ODK-UMPO enterprise for producing engines for SU-57 fighters, also knew about the final recipient of its products. Here, we offer several arguments to prove this.
Firstly, this expensive equipment must be installed, commissioned, and maintained by the manufacturer. Without it, such equipment is just a lump of iron.
Secondly, considering the message on Facebook, in November 2020, Galika AG’s service manager Ivan Semenskoy flew from Sheremetyevo Airport (Moscow) to Ufa (Bashkortostan). ODK-UMPO, which ordered the expensive machine tools, is located right there. Marek Belzak from Poland liked Semenskoy’s post about this trip. This person is Walter Maschinenbau’s Sales Director for Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
Fritz Studer AG, a German company, also agreed to supply equipment. In 2015, the Russian Federal Accreditation Service audited the company that certified equipment imported to the Russian Federation. It turned out that the German company authorized Galika AG to sell its machines there. It means that one firm in Switzerland produces machine tools, and another, which does not produce anything but only resells, represents the manufacturer in the Russian Federation.
Index Traub, also a German company, not only supplies equipment to Russians but also opened an office in the Russian city of Tolyatti, Samara Oblast, in 2016. The company explained that this decision was made due to the “political situation.”
“The current political situation requires us to localize our production in Russia so that we can participate in tenders of state-owned companies on an equal footing with other market participants,” the company said.
Blohm Jung GmbH of Germany expressly states on its website that it is part of the UNITED GRINDING Group with dedicated subsidiaries for international markets in India, China, Russia, and the USA.
All these companies help Russia produce weapons used in the war against Ukraine. They know about it but do not leave the Russian market anyway.
Scandals Involving Galika AG
Switzerland has long known that Galika AG is closely linked to Russia. In 2019, journalists discovered that the company had supplied equipment for producing Kalashnikov assault rifles in Venezuela. However, the Swiss officials turned a blind eye to this fact.
“In 2012, Galika AG from Volketswil in the canton of Zürich supplied machines for producing AK-103 assault rifles worth several million Swiss francs. The plant in the city of Maracay is due to start up by late 2019 and will produce 25,000 Kalashnikovs per year.
The export ban did not apply to the equipment sold by Galika AG. It is because the equipment did not fall under the category of military materiel and was not considered so-called dual-use goods. We are talking about those machines that can be used for military purposes,” the media wrote.
And last year, Galika AG applied to SECO, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, to obtain two permits to export to Russia: a Swiss-made milling machine and a lathe. It was claimed to be intended to make parts for medical devices.
However, the Swiss intelligence service suspects that the documents are fake and the devices are intended for the military sector – the production of sensors for the SU-57 stealth multirole fighters. So far, the Russians have problems manufacturing parts for new jet fighters.
After the permits had been denied, the company tried again to deliver the same machines to Russia. This time, it indicated that they were intended for a foil balloon toy company. Permits were denied again.
In March 2022, after the start of the war in Ukraine, Handelszeitung reported that Galika AG was again trying to supply equipment to Russia.
What Happened after February 24, 2022?
The Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation counted at least eight companies affiliated with the Swiss Galika AG in Russia.
One of them is Galika-Met, registered in the city of Elektrostal near Moscow. According to public procurement data, by May 1, 2022, the company must supply, assemble, and put into operation a suite of process equipment from the Swiss GF Machining Solutions.
It costs RUB 407 million. The customer is the aircraft engine-building company JSC Kuznetsov, a part of Rostekh.
The GF Machining Solutions website reports that the Swiss company is represented in Russia by Galika AG. That is, the Swiss company GF Machining Solutions, through its representative Galika, sold and installed equipment at the defense enterprise of the aggressor country in May 2022.
Earlier, in May 2020, Galika-Met supplied a coordinate measuring machine to the ODK. And in October of the same year, the defense enterprise produced the first batch of new engines for the upgraded Tu-160M strategic bombers, which Russia uses actively against the Ukrainians.
Making Money on Ukrainians’ Blood
Following the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, on July 31, 2014, the European Union imposed an embargo on imports and exports of arms to Russia, as well as banned exports of dual-use goods and technologies for military use to Russia or Russian military end-users. The EU also banned exports of goods and technologies that can be used for both military and civilian purposes. In addition, the EU has required exporters to obtain prior permission from member states’ competent authorities to export certain types of energy equipment and technologies to Russia.
It means that the activities of all the Swiss, Italian, and German companies mentioned above are nothing more than the circumvention of EU sanctions to make a profit from the lives of Ukrainians.
Of course, the Soloshenko family shot dead by a Russian tank cannot be brought back to life, but it is possible to block access to Western equipment for the Russian military industry. Thus, the competent authorities in the EU should pay attention to the activities of these companies, introduce new sanctions against them, and close the gaps in the sanctions policy.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is upending the global arms industry.
As the U.S. and its allies pour significant sums of money into arming Ukraine and Russia bleeds tanks and personnel, countries across the world are rethinking defense budgets, materiel needs and military relationships. Countries that historically have had low levels of defense spending such as Japan and Germany are bulking up, while nations that purchase most of their weapons from Russia are questioning their reliability and future delivery.
My research in this area suggests that, however this war eventually ends, the repercussions for the global defense industry, and for the countries whose companies dominate this sector, will be enormous. Here are four takeaways.
1. Russia will be the biggest loser
Russia’s general sales pitch for its weapons has been they’re “cheaper and easier to maintain than Western alternatives.” This is why Russia accounted for 19% of the world’s arms exports from 2017 to 2021, second only to the U.S., which had 39% of the market.
However, this pitch may no longer be effective for many countries that have seen Russian equipment losses and failures in Ukraine.
To date, the U.S. estimates Russia has lost almost a thousand tanks, at least 50 helicopters, 36 fighter-bombers and 350 artillery pieces, according to Business Insider. Thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed, with estimates ranging from about 15,000 to as high as 30,000, and Russia is still unable to control Ukraine’s airspace.
The situation has become so dire that there are reports that commanders are trying to preserve equipment by forbidding troops from using them to evacuate wounded soldiers or to support units that have advanced too far.
Russia’s offensive weapons have also proved disappointing. Its missile failure rate – the share that either failed to launch, malfunctioned mid-flight or missed their target – may be as high as 50% to 60% due to design flaws and outdated or inferior equipment.
These problems, along with the Russian military’s slow progress achieving any of President Vladimir Putin’s stated objectives, have raised serious doubts among the country’s traditional customers for weapons exports. Russia sells almost 90% of its weapons to just 10 countries, including India, Egypt and China.
What’s more, Russia’s ability to replace these equipment losses has been hampered by economic sanctions, which bars key foreign components like circuit boards. And Russia will almost certainly need to replace its own military hardware before it exports anything abroad.
That means that even countries that want to keep buying Russian tanks and fighter jets will have to wait in line or turn elsewhere to fulfill their defense needs.
2. Russia’s loss is China’s gain
The country that will likely see the greatest gains from Russia’s displacement as a major arms supplier is China.
In recent years, the country has taken a 4.6% share of the global arms trade, putting it in fourth place behind France’s 11%. At the same time, seven of the top 20 global defense companies in terms of revenues earned from defense sales are Chinese, signaling the sector’s big ambitions.
Currently, the Chinese government buys most of its weapons and vehicles from these domestic arms makers, but China has the capacity to export more military products abroad.
For example, China is already the world’s largest shipbuilder, so exporting more naval ships is a natural next step. The country is expanding its niche role in drone technology and attempting to leverage modernizing its air force with domestically built aircraft to increase exports.
At the moment, only three of the world’s 40 biggest arms importers – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar – buy a majority of their weapons from China. That could change if China takes advantage of Russian weakness to position itself as a reliable national security, economic and political partner – a core feature of its Belt and Road Initiative.
China is not capable of supplanting U.S. and European weapons, which are considered “top shelf” because of their high quality and price. But China may well fill the market niche that Russian arms makers dominated, thereby increasing Beijing’s role as a major weapons exporter – and gaining the political and economic benefits that accompany that.
One of China’s biggest challenges will involve proving that its weapons work well in live combat situations.
3. American arms makers will also be big winners
U.S. weapons manufactures dominate the global arms industry. The Ukraine war will likely ensure this stays that way for some time.
The world’s five largest arms companies are all American: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. In fact, half of the top 100 producers of arms are based in the U.S. Twenty are European. Only two are Russian – despite the country being the world’s second-largest source of arms.
The massive amounts of weapons being transferred from the U.S. to Ukraine will keep American arms makers busy for some time to come. For example, the U.S. has transferred about one-third of its stock of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, and it will take three to four years for the Raytheon-Lockheed Martin joint venture to replace them. The US$40 billion aid package recently signed by President Joe Biden includes $8.7 billion to replenish U.S. weapons stocks.
The companies’ soaring stock prices are a sign investors believe profitable days are ahead. Lockheed Martin’s stock price is up over 12% since the invasion began – with most of the gains occurring in its immediate aftermath. Northrop Grumman has jumped 20%. At the same time, the broader stock market as measured by the S&P 500 has slumped about 4%.
4. More countries will become arms makers
The flipside to this is that some countries that relied on others for their defense needs may seek to become more self-sufficient.
India, which relied on Russia for almost half of its weapons imports in recent years, is realizing that Russia will need most or all of its production capacity to replace tanks, missiles, aircraft and other weapons used or lost in Ukraine, with less leftover for export.
That means India will need to either source spare parts for vehicles and weapons from other former Russia arms customers such as Bulgaria, Georgia and Poland, or build up its own defense industry. In April, India announced it would ramp up production of helicopters, tank engines, missiles and early airborne warning systems to offset any potential reduction in Russian exports.
Concerns about Russian reliability are also growing. In May, India canceled a $520 million helicopter deal with Russia. While there are reports U.S. pressure played a role, it also seems to be part of the government’s strategy over the past few years to build its own domestic defense industrial base.
Brazil, Turkey and other emerging market countries have also been developing their own defense industries over the past two decades to reduce their reliance on arms imports. The Ukraine war will accelerate this process.
Putin likely didn’t expect to shake up the global arms market with his effort to annex Ukraine – or cause the decline of his country’s weapons sector. But that’s just one more way his war is causing a geopolitical earthquake.
This article has been updated to correct the size of the canceled Indian helicopter deal.
Despite the embargo imposed in 2014, at least ten EU countries sold military equipment and weapons to the Russian Federation. According to the Working Party on Conventional Arms Exports (COARM) and all EU-27 arms export registers, between 2015 and 2020, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia and Spain sold weapons worth a total of €346 million to Russia.
For the most part, the countries used a loophole in EU rules to continue trade. The Working Party explained that the EU arms embargo contained the following exception: “Contracts signed before August 1, 2014, or ancillary contracts required to perform such agreements. Those contained in the database must be subject to this exception. The member states are responsible for ensuring compliance with the arms embargo and the EU’s common position.”
However, the conclusion is not so simple. Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), points to a difference between regular economic trade and arms exports, “Weapons are part of our foreign policy, not economic policy. Political reasons are the main thing.”
France made the most significant contribution to Russia’s military arsenal by supplying it with infrared guidance systems. According to Disclose, France sold equipment worth €152 million to Russia.
Since 2015, France has supplied bombs, missiles, rockets, torpedoes, explosives, direct lethal weapons, day and night fire control cameras for fighters and missile systems, and thermal imagers. The number of licenses issued by France jumped in 2015, immediately after the embargo was imposed.
In 2014, French authorities gave permission to send chemical, biological and radioactive materials as well as related equipment. In 2016, France’s General Secretariat for Defense and National Security approved eight applications for warranty repair and replacement of equipment. However, the French government claims that only equipment left from the previously concluded contracts was supplied.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s behavior could be explained by the fact that after the defeat of Russia many “unpleasant” facts might be revealed.
Germany ranks second. According to Investigate Europe, it exported military equipment worth €121.8 million to Russia. The major volume of weapons was exported in 2015. The report says then Germany sold two rescue icebreakers for €119 million. The website of the manufacturer, Nordic Yards, indicates the icebreakers Bering Strait and Murman are intended for search and rescue operations, towing, and environmental protection efforts in case of emergency oil spills. In 2017, Germany sold hydrazine – fuel for rocket engines and spacecraft – for €2.5 million to Russia.
In addition, Germany delivered dual-purpose goods worth €366 million. That’s why the German politicians who slammed arms exports do not consider these supplies a violation of the embargo. According to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, the deliveries included a variety of high-tech electronics, sensors and lasers that can be used in the manufacture of weapons. The export of these goods was finally banned in the fourth sanctions package.
Italy comes third. From 2015 to 2020, it sold military equipment for a total of €22.5 million. The first major contract was concluded in 2015. The government headed by Matteo Renzi allowed the Italian company Iveco to sell vehicles worth €25 million to Russia. Lynce armored vehicles manufactured by Iveco were spotted by a journalist of LA7 TV channel at the front in Ukraine in early March. According to Istat, Italy’s National Institute of Statistics, in January-November 2021 Italy supplied weapons and ammunition worth €21.9 million.
In 2015-2019, the Czech Republic exported aircraft, drones, aircraft engines and equipment. Every year, Austria sold Russia smoothbore weapons with calibers under 20mm, 12.7mm automatic weapons, ammunition installation devices, detonators and their components. Bulgaria, under two contracts in 2016 and 2018, exported military ships and other vessels, special naval equipment, accessories and components, and technology for the development, production or use of products included in the EU Common Military List to the tune of €16.5 million.
Finland, Spain, Slovakia and Croatia each made one export delivery to Russia, though much smaller than in previous years.
However, according to SIPRI data on arms exports, there is an even more interesting fact: not only EU countries have sold weapons to Russia since the 2014 embargo. It is about not about weapons but licenses for their manufacture. According to SIPRI senior researcher Siemon Wezeman, these were 15 Antonov-148 transport aircraft manufactured at the Voronezh Aircraft Manufacturing Plant in Russia.
In mid-April 2022, the European Commission approved the fifth sanctions package, closing the legal loophole in the 2014 embargo that had allowed deliveries of arms and dual-purpose goods to Russia.
Ukraine calls out Italian metal company for “supporting Russia’s military complex” Credit: Creative Commons
The Defence of Ukraine called out an Italian steel-plant company for its collaboration with Russia, in supplying equipment allegedly destined to produce nuclear submarines and tank armour.
Taking to Twitter to publicly call out the Italian company and its support of Russia, the Defence of Ukraine posted:
“After four months of the large-scale war, Italian-based #Danieli still collaborates with russian plants, supplying equipment to produce nuclear submarines and tank armor. Supporting russian military complex goes against lawful and moral considerations. #BoycottRussia”
After four months of the large-scale war, Italian-based #Danieli still collaborates with russian plants, supplying equipment to produce nuclear submarines and tank armor. Supporting russian military complex goes against lawful and moral considerations. #BoycottRussia pic.twitter.com/yxV2x7nk9l
— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) June 20, 2022
Credit: Twitter @DefenceU
Twitter users responded quickly to the Defence of Ukraine’s tweet on the Italian company , with one user posting: “Don’t EU sanction prevent this sort of crap?”
Another user posted: “It’s in the bl**dy logo right there, just have a look”
Another user said: “What a horror story, this. The 🇮🇹s, as @mraz1313 often & rightly says, should be made to feel shame. Capital can be the dirty bedfellow of#AnAilingConscience”
“Some people’s greed amazes me,” stated another Twitter user.
The Italian company, Danieli Group, is an Italian supplier of equipment and physical plants in the metal industry. Based in the north-eastern Italian territory of Butrrio, the company is reportedly a world leader in its field.
The news of Ukraine calling out the Italian company follows various European countries issuing further sanctions on Russia, with Norway stating:
“We support the European Union in imposing sanctions against Russia in order to put pressure on the government of that country and its leadership. Now we are banning the import of oil from Russia to Norway via sea routes.”
Since the invasion of Ukraine began, we have been tracking the responses of well over 1,200 companies, and counting. Over 1,000 companies have publicly announced they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia to some degree beyond the bare minimum legally required by international sanctions — but some companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred.
Originally a simple “withdraw” vs. “remain” list, our list of companies now consists of five categories—graded on a school-style letter grade scale of A-F for the completeness of withdrawal.
The list below is updated continuously by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his team of experts, research fellows, and students at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute to reflect new announcements from companies in as close to real time as possible.
Our list has already garnered extensive coverage for its role in helping catalyze the mass corporate exodus from Russia.
When this list was first published the week of February 28, only several dozen companies had announced their departure. We are humbled that our list helped galvanize nearly 1,000 companies to withdraw in the two months since.
Although we are pleased that our list has been widely circulated across company boardrooms, government officials, and media outlets as the most authoritative and comprehensive record of this powerful, historic movement, we are most inspired by the thousands of messages we have received from readers across the globe, especially those from Ukraine, and we continue to welcome your tips – preferably with documentation – as well as your insights, and feedback, at jeffrey.sonnenfeld.celi@yale.edu.
For a sortable, detailed version of the list below, please visit our enhanced database where you can filter companies by letter grade, country, sector, and much more.
Click here to watch President Zelenskyy’s interactive Q&A, hosted by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and live-streamed by CNBC, with over 150 top US CEOs at the Yale CEO Summit in June 2022, and click here to read about President Zelenskyy’s key lessons for business leaders.
Click here to read our recent SSRN working paper on the response across financial markets to our list, in which we demonstrate that investors are penalizing companies that remain in Russia.
If you want to get in touch with the “D”-rated and “F”-rated companies found here, you may locate contact information on this non-Yale affiliated website: www.emailcontactukraine.com. We do not endorse nor certify the accuracy of this list of addresses, but in response to frequent requests, we are aware of this external non-Yale resource.
Companies that are just continuing business-as-usual in Russia…
Name
Action
Industry
Country
Acerinox
still operating in Russia
Materials
Spain
Agrana
continue operating plant in Russia
Consumer Staples
Austria
Agricultural Bank of China
Russian companies open accounts with the bank; decline to comment
Financials
China
Aimbridge | Interstate Hotels
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Air China
still flying to Russia
Industrials
China
Air Serbia
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Serbia
Alibaba
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
China
Align Technology
still operating in Russia
Health Care
United States
Alpina Žiri
distributors in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Slovenia
Alumil
Not disclosed publicly
Materials
Greece
Anadolu Efes
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Turkey
ANT Group
joint venture with the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund
Information Technology
China
Anta Sports
still operating and providing online sales to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
China
Antal
still operating and actively hiring in Russia
Industrials
United Kingdom
AnyDesk Software
still providing services to Russia; not disclosed publicly
Information Technology
Germany
Ariston Group
still operating and actively hiring in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
Asics
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Consumer Discretionary
Japan
Auchan-Retail
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
France
AVL
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Austria
B. Braun
still operating in Russia
Health Care
Germany
Babolat
still operating and selling to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Bajaj Auto
business as usual
Consumer Discretionary
India
Bekaert
still manufacturing for the Russian market
Industrials
Belgium
Benetton
continue operations in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
Bharat Petroleum (BPCL)
bought 2 million barrels of Russian Urals for May loading
Energy
India
Binbit
Operating in Russia
Communication Services
Mexico
Boggi
still operating in Russia & online sales running
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
Bonduelle
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
France
BPW
still cooperating with dealers in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Consumer Discretionary
Germany
Buzzi Unicem
continue operating plants in Russia
Materials
Italy
Cadence
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Information Technology
United States
Calzedonia
continue sales in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
Camille Albane
franchised salons continue to operate
Consumer Discretionary
France
CANPACK
still operating in Russia
Materials
Poland
Carl’s Jr. | CLK
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Cham Wings
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Syria
Charoen Pokphand Foods
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Thailand
Check Point Software
selling cybersecurity products in Russia
Information Technology
Israel
China Communications Construction Company
planning new infrastructural projects
Industrials
China
China Construction Bank
Russian companies open accounts with the bank; decline to comment
Financials
China
China Life Insurance Company
offices in Russia, actively looks for new Russian employees
Financials
China
China Minmetals
discussing investments with Chinese government to booster stakes in Russian energy and commodity companies
Materials
China
China Mobile
business as usual
Communication Services
China
China National Petroleum Corporation
business as usual
Energy
China
China Railway Construction Corporation
continues to build Vladivostok highway in March 2022
Industrials
China
China Railway Engineering Corporation
business as usual
Industrials
China
China State Construction Engineering
contractor to the Russian state
Industrials
China
China State Railway Group Company
increasing coal shipments from Russia
Industrials
China
China United Network Communications
a subsidiary in Russia: China Unicom (Russia) Operations Limited Liability Company; business as usual
Communication Services
China
Chipita
Not disclosed publicly; still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Greece
Clarins
still selling online in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
CLINTON
still operating in Russia (Camp David)
Consumer Discretionary
Germany
Cloudflare
continue sales & services in Russia
Information Technology
United States
Coal India
expecting highest import level in 2 years
Energy
India
Cofix Coffee
maintains locations in Russia
Consumer Staples
Israel
Colin’s
still selling online
Consumer Discretionary
Turkey
Corendon Airlines
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Turkey
Covestro
still operating in Russia
Materials
Germany
Cremonini Group
continue sales in Russia
Consumer Staples
Italy
De Cecco
continue sales and operations in Russia
Consumer Staples
Italy
Deep in Russia
still offering trips to Russia
Industrials
Belgium
Dessange International
still operating salons in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Didi
explicitly reversed decision to exit Russia
Industrials
China
Diesel
still operating in Russia; not disclosed
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
Doka
still manufacturing in Russia; not disclosed
Industrials
Austria
Dr Reddys Labs
business as usual; plans new brands in Russia
Health Care
India
Duol
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Slovenia
Egger
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Austria
Egyptair
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Egypt
ELA Container
still selling in Russia
Industrials
Germany
ElvalHalcor
Not disclosed publicly
Materials
Greece
Emirates Airlines
still flying to Russia
Industrials
United Arab Emirates
EMS-Chemie
still operating in Russia
Materials
Switzerland
Etam
still selling to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Etihad Airways
still flying to Russia
Industrials
United Arab Emirates
Eutelsat
provide satellite TV services to Russia
Communication Services
France
Faurecia
still operating and advertising in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
FAW Group
remains silent on whether they will continue operations
Industrials
China
Fenzi Group
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Italy
Fischer Sports
still selling online
Consumer Discretionary
Austria
Fleetcor
business as usual
Financials
United States
Fluidra
continuing sales in Russia
Industrials
Spain
Fondital
still operating and investing in Russia
Industrials
Italy
Foraco
still operating in Russia
Energy
France
Forever Living Products
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Freedom Holding
still operating in Russia
Financials
Kazakhstan
Fresenius
still operating in Russia
Health Care
Germany
Frigoglass
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Greece
Fujifilm
still operating and advertising in Russia
Information Technology
Japan
Gedeon Richter
still operating in Russia
Health Care
Hungary
Geoplin
still purchasing Russian gas from Gazprom
Energy
Slovenia
Giorgio Armani
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
Global Fashion Group
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Luxembourg
Globus
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Germany
Gorenje
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Slovenia
Groupe Le Duff
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Groupe Savencia
still operates in Russia
Consumer Staples
France
Grupo Borges | ITLV
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Spain
Grupo Fuertes
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Spain
Haier
planning expansion in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
China
Hampidjan
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Iceland
Hard Rock Café
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
United States
Heliski Russia
cooperating with sanctioned individuals
Industrials
France
Hengli Group
business as usual
Energy
China
Heraeus
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Germany
Herend
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Hungary
Hindalco
business as usual
Materials
India
Hoffmann Group
still operating and advertising in Russia
Industrials
Germany
Honor
business as usual
Information Technology
China
Huntsman Corporation
still operating in Russia
Materials
United States
Ideal Molde
still selling to Russia
Industrials
Portugal
Indian Oil Corporation
signed new deal to import Russian oil
Energy
India
Industrial Bank (China)
offices operating in Moscow, did not answer for Reuters’ calls for commenting on that
Financials
China
International Baccalaureate Organization
still offers professional development services to Russian teachers
NGO
Netherlands
International Paper
still operating in Russia
Materials
United States
IQVIA
still operating and actively hiring
Industrials
United States
Itochu
continues oil & gas exploration partnerships
Consumer Staples
Japan
JD.com
business as usual – the Russian store is still fully operational
Industrials
China
JDE Peet’s
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Netherlands
Jean Cacharel
still selling and advertising in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
JSW Steel
business as usual
Materials
India
Kemin
still operating in Russia; declined to commend
Health Care
United States
Kidzania
Operating facility in Russia
Communication Services
Mexico
KION Group
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Industrials
Germany
Kleemann
Not disclosed publicly
Industrials
Greece
Knarr Maritime
members still operating in Russia
Industrials
Iceland
Koch Industries
considering options for an exit; continuing operations
Industrials
United States
Kotanyi
still exporting to Russia
Consumer Staples
Austria
Koton
still advertising and selling to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Turkey
Krka
still operating in Russia
Health Care
Slovenia
Kronospan
still operating in Russia
Materials
Austria
Kweichow Moutai
business as usual
Consumer Staples
China
La Redoute
still selling products to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Lacoste
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
LACTALIS
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
France
Larsen & Toubro
business as usual
Real Estate
India
Legrand
still operating in Russia
Industrials
France
Lemken
still operating and advertising in Russia
Industrials
Germany
Leptos Estates
continues operations in Russia
Real Estate
Cyprus
Leroy Merlin
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Letique Cosmetics
maintains stores in Russia
Consumer Staples
Latvia
Liebherr
No action taken; still operating in Russia
Industrials
Switzerland
LiSEC
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Austria
Luka Koper
continuing trans shipments
Industrials
Slovenia
Mahindra & Mahindra
business as usual
Consumer Discretionary
India
Mahle
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Germany
Makita
still working with dealers in Russia
Industrials
Japan
Makrochem SA
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Poland
Match Group
continue to operate in Russia including Tinder
Communication Services
United States
Maxam
still operating in Russia
Materials
Spain
Medtronic
continue operating subsidiary in Russia
Health Care
United States
Micro-Star International Co. (MSi)
still operating in Russia
Information Technology
Taiwan
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Japan
Mitsui
continuing operations within sanctions compliance & shares in Sakhalin-2 project
Materials
Japan
Mizuho Financial Group
still operating in Russia
Financials
Japan
Mod’s Hair
still operates in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
MOLGroup
still operating in Russia
Energy
Hungary
MSU S.A.
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Poland
New Yorker Marketing & Media GmbH
continue to operate and open new stores
Industrials
Germany
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
continues to operate cloud services in Russia
Communication Services
Japan
NIS Serbia
partnership with Gazprom Neft; Gazprom has a 50% stake in NIS
Energy
Serbia
Oasis Logistics Corp
“We are actively exploring opportunities to work with our Russian partners”
Industrials
China
OBO Bettermann
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Germany
OCSiAl
still running research center and branch
Information Technology
Luxembourg
OKI
still operating in Russia; not disclosed
Information Technology
Japan
ONGC
aggressive selling of Russian Sokoil to other Indian Nationalised Energy corps
Energy
India
Oppo
business as usual
Information Technology
China
Orano
still operating in Russia
Energy
France
Paccar
still active in Russia; deny comments
Industrials
United States
Patreon
still providing services to Russia
Financials
United States
Pegasus
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Turkey
Perfetti Van Melle
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Consumer Staples
Italy
Philips
online sales still available in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Netherlands
Pidilite Ind
business as usual
Materials
India
Plastika Kritis
Not disclosed publicly
Materials
Greece
Poly Real Estate
a sister company is Poly Technologies, one of China’s largest arms exporters and has been sanctioned by the United States; in Russian tax registry
Real Estate
China
Posco
operating through a Russian subsidiary
Materials
South Korea
PowerChina
cooperating with a Russian bank “Solidarnost” on off-shore projectes
Energy
China
Projahn
still operating in Russia through a subsidiary
Industrials
Germany
Provalliance Group (Jean Louis David)
affiliates still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Qatar Airways
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Qatar
Quicksilver
online sales still running
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Raba
maintain commerical ties with Russian Kamaz
Industrials
Hungary
Rabe Moden
still advertising and selling to Russia via Telegram
Consumer Discretionary
Germany
Raiffeisen Bank International
still operating in Russia
Financials
Austria
Remondis
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Industrials
Germany
Riko
still operating in Russa
Industrials
Slovenia
Riot Games
still operating in and selling to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Royal Swinkels Family Brewers
still providing Russia with a license to brew products; intention to terminate the license
Consumer Staples
Netherlands
Russia Fachspedition Dr. Lassmann
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Austria
SAIC Motor
remains operational; plans to increase export
Industrials
China
Sanatmetal
still operating in Russia
Health Care
Hungary
Sany Heavy Industries
business as usual
Industrials
China
Sarantis
still operating in Russia
Consumer Staples
Greece
Sbarro Pizza
still operating in Russia and allowing placing online orders
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Schoeller Bleckmann
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Austria
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation
defies US sanctions by continuting to export to Russia
Information Technology
China
SGS
still operating and actively advertising in Russia
Industrials
Switzerland
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical
business as usual
Health Care
China
Siemens Healthineers
continue to support healthcare providers
Health Care
Germany
Signet Armorite
operating in Russia through a subsidiary
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Sika
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Switzerland
Sisecam
still operating in Russia through subsidiaries
Materials
Turkey
SMC
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Japan
Société Bic
still operating and actively hiring in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Stada Arzneimittel
still operating in Russia
Health Care
Germany
State Grid Corporation of China
business as usual
Utilities
China
Storck
continue candy sales in Russia
Consumer Staples
Germany
Stryker
continue sales and imports to Russia
Health Care
United States
Sun Pharma
business as usual
Health Care
India
SWISS KRONO
still operating plant in Russia
Industrials
Switzerland
Syngenta
still operating in Russia
Health Care
China
Synopsys
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Information Technology
United States
Sæplast
not publically disclosed
Materials
Iceland
Talgo
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Spain
Tencent
major investment in VK
Communication Services
China
Tenneco
still operating in Russia; deny comments
Consumer Discretionary
United States
TEPCO
continues purchases of Russian gas
Utilities
Japan
Teva
no action taken; still operating Russia
Health Care
Israel
TGI Friday’s
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
The China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association
big power plants and about 20 Russian coal companies discussed plans to increase bilateral trade
Energy
China
Titan International
still operating in Russia
Industrials
United States
Tom Ford
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Tupperware
still operating and actively hiring in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Turkish Airlines
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Turkey
UniCredit
Still operating in Russia
Financials
Italy
Uzbekistan Airways
still flying to Russia
Industrials
Uzbekistan
Valeo
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Valve
still providing services to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Vanke
business as usual
Real Estate
China
Veolia
still operating in Russia
Utilities
France
Vinci SA
still operating in Russia
Industrials
France
Vivo
still operating in Russia
Industrials
China
Wanhua Chemical Group
still operating in Russia
Materials
China
Wienerberger
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Austria
WIKA
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Germany
Wolffkran
still operating in Russia
Industrials
Switzerland
Xibao Metallurgy Materials Group
building a refractory material plant in Lipetsk, Russia
Industrials
China
Yazaki
operating in Russia through a subsidiary
Consumer Discretionary
Japan
Yokogawa
still operating in Russia; not disclosed publicly
Information Technology
Japan
Zepter
still advertising and selling to Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Switzerland
Zimmer Biomet
continues sales in Russia
Health Care
United States
ZTE
business as usual
Information Technology
China
Zwack
Not disclosed publicly
Consumer Staples
Hungary
Buying Time
Holding Off New Investments/Development (160 Companies) (Grade: D)
Companies postponing future planned investment/development/marketing while continuing substantive business…
Name
Action
Industry
Country
Aalberts
continue operations on an unspecified “lower” level & postpone investments
Industrials
Netherlands
Abbott Laboratories
suspend non-essential business activity
Health Care
United States
Abbvie
suspend aesthetics operations, pause new clinical trials
Health Care
United States
Accor
suspend new investments/development
Consumer Discretionary
France
Accumalux
still operating plant in Togliatti, Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Luxembourg
Aegon
ending new investments where has control over fund
Financials
Netherlands
Air Liquide
Some clients no longer supplied, others scaled down; all Russian investments on hold
Materials
France
Airbus
suspend supply of parts and deliveries/servicing, t but continue substantial titanium purchases from Russia
Industrials
Netherlands
Akrapovič
still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Slovenia
Alcon
suspend new investments and new clinical trial enrollment in Russia
Health Care
Switzerland
AmerisourceBergen
cease new business initiatives but continue existing clinical trials, and distributing health products
Health Care
United States
Andbank
investigate if Russian customers are subject to European sanctions
Financials
Andorra
Andritz
suspend unspecified new business in Russia for time being
Industrials
Austria
Anecoop
diverting sales away from Russia
Consumer Staples
Spain
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)
unspecified scaling down of non-essential operations
Consumer Staples
United States
Arconic
pause new contracts but continue existing
Materials
United States
AstraZeneca
halt new investments/new clinical trials
Health Care
United Kingdom
Aurubis AG
monitor situation and review structures of Russian business partners
Industrials
Germany
Aviva
suspend new Russian investments
Financials
United Kingdom
Bang & Bonsomer
suspend new investments but still operating in Russia
Materials
Finland
Barilla
all new investments and advertising activities on hold; limit Russia production to pasta and bread
Consumer Staples
Italy
Barry Callebaut
suspend capital investment
Consumer Staples
Switzerland
Bayer
stopping unspecified non-essential business activity
Health Care
Germany
Binance
restrict Russian accounts with over €10,000
Financials
China
BlaBlaCar
Stopped new investment but stays in Russia
Information Technology
France
Boiron
suspend new investments & stop clinical trials
Health Care
France
Bolt
remove all Russia-manufactured and Russian-branded goods
Information Technology
Estonia
Bristol-Myers Squibb
pause new trials & stop enrollment of new participants; still actively hiring in Russia
Health Care
United States
Calfrac Well Services
suspension of new investments in Russia
Energy
Canada
Campari
continue sales in Russia but suspend new investments
Consumer Staples
Italy
CAPRI Holdings (Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Cho)
online orders unavailable but still advertising; no information about on-site sales
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Cargill
unspecified scaling down of non-essential operations
Consumer Staples
United States
Carmim
suspend some orders in backlog
Consumer Staples
Portugal
Citadele Banka
still allows transactions to Russia but introduced more thorough checks
Financials
Latvia
Colgate-Palmolive
continue essential health and hygiene products
Consumer Staples
United States
Corticeira Amorim
commerical activity suspended
Materials
Portugal
Crèdit Andorrà
investigate if Russian customers are subject to European sanctions
Financials
Andorra
Danone
suspend all investment projects but continue dairy products; suspend imports of Evian and Alpro products
Consumer Staples
France
Deceuninck
stop investments & cut links with other establishments
Industrials
Belgium
Delonghi
paused new shipments and investments
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
DMK Group
suspend new investments/advertising but continue sales and plant operations in Russia
Consumer Staples
Germany
Domino’s Pizza
suspend royalty payments & limit investment – restaurants remain open
Consumer Discretionary
United States
dōTERRA
suspend new investment in Russia
Consumer Staples
United States
Dr. Theiss
suspend advertisement
Health Care
Germany
Ecco
suspend new investments still operating in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Denmark
Eesti Gaas
continues to import Russian gas but is looking for alternatives
Energy
Estonia
Ehrmann
continue sales in Russia but suspend new investments
Consumer Staples
Germany
Ekosem Agrar AG
restructuring finances
Consumer Staples
Germany
Eli Lilly
suspend new investments and clinical trials
Health Care
United States
Engie
no new investments
Utilities
France
ESL
ban people with ties to Russian government
NGO
Germany
FL Smidth
no new business
Industrials
Denmark
FM Global
stopped renewing and underwriting new reinsurance
Financials
United States
Focus Brands – Cinnabon
no new investments and expansion plans on hold
Industrials
United States
Freelancer
still operating in Russia; sanctioned payment menthods disabled
Information Technology
Australia
Freudenberg Group
cease trading operations with Russia & Belarus; running plants in Russia
Industrials
Germany
GEA Group
suspend new investments
Industrials
Germany
Geox
suspend new investments
Consumer Discretionary
Italy
GlaxoSmithKline
stopped advertising/new clinical trials in Russia
Health Care
United Kingdom
Glencore
stop entering into new Russian commodities trading contracts but continue holding substantive Russian equity stakes
Materials
Switzerland
Greif
canceled future investments in Russia
Materials
United States
GROUPE LIMAGRAIN/JACQUET-BROSSARD
continues flows to Russian and Ukrainian producers but suspends its project to build a seed factory in Russia
Industrials
France
Groupe Seb
suspend new investments and “sharply” reduce activities in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
France
Gruma
halt new investments in Russia
Consumer Staples
Mexico
GXO Logistics
suspend new investments
Industrials
United States
HeidelbergCement
suspend all further investments
Materials
Germany
Hellenic Bank
maintain rep offices in Russia; observe all banking sactions
Financials
Cyprus
Hellenic Petroleum
seeks new oil supplier to replace Russian oil
Energy
Greece
HERZ
no new business in Russia
Consumer Discretionary
Austria
Hilton
suspend new investments/close corporate office
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Hines
suspend new investments in Russia
Industrials
United States
HiPP
suspend investments in Russia but continue substantive operations
Consumer Staples
Switzerland
Hochland
suspend investments but continues sales and plant operations in Russia
Consumer Staples
Germany
HSBC
curtail Russian access to capital markets and limit new business
Financials
United Kingdom
Huawei
suspend new orders and furlough some staff
Information Technology
China
Hyatt
suspend investments and new developments
Consumer Discretionary
United States
Icosagen
not start any new projects
Industrials
Estonia
ID Logistics
suspend new investment in Russia
Industrials
France
ING Bank
pause all new business
Financials
Netherlands
Ingram Micro
no new business in Russia
Information Technology
United States
Intercontinental Hotels
ended new investments/closed corporate office
Consumer Discretionary
United Kingdom
Intermedia
move some employees out of Russia and ambiguous reduction of risk exposure to Russia
Communication Services
United States
Intesa Sanpaolo
suspend new investments and curtail new financing
Financials
Italy
J. Neves & Fihos (JNF)
paused distribution
Industrials
Portugal
Japan Tobacco
stopped new investments and marketing activities in Russia
Consumer Staples
Japan
Johnson & Johnson
pause patient enrollment in ongoing trials
Health Care
United States
KCA Deutag
suspend investments
Energy
United Kingdom
KDDI Corp
continue operations with local staff
Communication Services
Japan
Kimberly-Clark
suspend new investments in Russia
Consumer Staples
United States
Knauf
still operating across 14 sites in Russia but suspend new investments
Materials
Germany
Kraft Heinz – JBS
stopped new investments and exports/imports from Russia
Consumer Staples
United States
Kubíček VHS
stop cooperation
Industrials
Czech Republic
Laboratoire Servier
suspending new investments but still operating in Russia
After the start of the full-scale attack of Russia on Ukraine, with tens of thousands killed and multiple war crimes documented, many companies (often under the pressure of their customers and shareholders) have left Russia. Others stayed, continuing to provide goods and services — to Russians and taxes — to the Russian government.
Figure 1 shows that the healthcare industry has the highest share of companies that continue business as usual or have slightly modified it (usually this implies halting advertising, new investment and new clinical trials), followed by energy, consumer staples and utilities. While the EU has introduced a partial energy embargo (which will probably force some energy companies to leave), the situation with healthcare companies and those producing consumer staples is more complicated. Theoretically these companies can justify their stay in russia by humanism, i.e. providing necessary food or medicine to russian consumers. But how many of them actually do this and are their arguments valid?
To answer this question, we looked at companies operating in healthcare and consumer staples that belong to groups D and F (i.e. the companies that remain in russia) by Yale classification (figure 1) and added to them companies identified by Balyuk and Fedyk (2022) that belong to the same industries and decided to stay in Russia. In total, 111 companies were identified (this list is probably not exhaustive but we believe it contains the majority of companies).
The distribution of these companies by industry and country is presented in the following table.
Table 1. Country distribution of companies from consumer staples and healthcare industries that stay in Russia
country
Consumer Staples
Health Care
Austria
3
China
1
2
France
6
3
Germany
8
3
Greece
2
1
Hungary
1
2
Iceland
1
India
2
Israel
1
Italy
3
1
Japan
2
Latvia
1
Mexico
1
Netherlands
1
1
Poland
1
1
Portugal
1
Singapore
1
Slovenia
1
Spain
3
Switzerland
3
3
Thailand
1
United Kingdom
1
3
United States
13
33
Total
55
56
Of these companies, 43 did not make any statement on the Russia-Ukraine war. 22 wrote only about their actions (most often complying with sanctions, stopping advertising and making new investment in Russia, and providing humanitarian support for Ukraine). 42 companies (35%) provided a justification for their stay in Russia based on humanitarian reasons.
Their excuses were:
providing basic food or hygiene products to Russian consumers
providing essential medicine and/or conducting clinical trials that are important for the humanity
providing jobs (arguing that Russian people are not responsible for actions of their government)
Some companies provided a combination of these explanations, e.g. Auchan:
Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that the inhabitants of our countries of operation have access to good quality food at an affordable price and thus meet the essential food needs of the civilian population. Our 30,000 Russian employees are doing the same job to be as close as possible to a population that has no personal responsibility in the outbreak of this war. Abandoning our employees, their families and our customers is not the choice we have made. As French President Emmanuel Macron has said, “we are not at war with the Russian people”. Closing our activities in Russia would be considered as a premeditated bankruptcy leading to an expropriation that would strengthen the Russian economic and financial ecosystem, would put our employees and their families in great precarity and would deprive, in a period of high inflation, the population of the services of a discounter distributor, which has been operating in the country for 20 years. Source: Auchan statement
In this statement we see one additional explanation – that “closing our activities in Russia would be considered as a premeditated bankruptcy leading to an expropriation that would strengthen the Russian economic and financial ecosystem”.
Let’s consider these explanations in more detail. Specifically, I will argue that none of them is substantiated by data or logic. This suggests that the decision for the majority of companies to continue operating in russia must be driven by their own financial considerations, rather than anything else.
First, 70-80% of Russians support Putin and believe that Russia is going in the right direction. Thus, most Russians are not suffering under Putin’s regime, they are highly supportive of it. Moreover, they are supporting the war. They are supporting killing of Ukrainians and raping of Ukrainian women and children (the Security Service of Ukraine published a large collection of recordings of Russian occupants talking between themselves or with their relatives. These recordings very well illustrate that they don’t consider Ukrainians as humans). Thus, no targeted sanctions against Putin himself or his minions will change the course of war. Heavy sectoral sanctions affecting all the Russian citizens should be applied. Ukraine is bearing an enormous cost of the war – tens of thousands of lives, between a third and a half of its economy, thousands of houses, roads and other infrastructural objects have been and are being destroyed. Moreover, at least 3000 Ukrainians died (according to WHO) because they were unable to receive medicines for their chronic diseases or immune diseases such as cancer because the supply chains are broken. On top of that, Russia constantly bombs hospitals and maternity homes.
Other countries are bearing a huge cost as well – supporting Ukrainian refugees, providing weapons, humanitarian and financial aid. David Nabarro from WHO said at the Davos forum that 94 countries are at risk of severe hunger or famine because of the Russian attack on Ukraine. Thus, it is unfair not only to Ukrainians but to millions of people in the world to try to shield Russian citizens from the consequences of war which they support.
As another example, Cargill justifies their continued operations in Russia by stating that “Food is a basic human right and should never be used as a weapon“. But this is exactly what Russia does – it destroys Ukrainian grain storages and agricultural machines, it steals Ukrainian grain and blocks Ukrainian ports depriving not only Ukrainian farmers of their revenues but also many people in African and Asian countries of food. If Cargill believes that food should not be used as a weapon then why is it supporting Russia?
Second, Russia is a large producer and exporter of food. It also has a large domestic retail sector (e.g. Magnit, Lenta, Perekrestok etc). So it is doubtful that without those companies or without foreign supermarkets the Russian population would be deprived of the basic food. Likewise, Russia has several dozens of producers of hygiene products which can substitute for foreign producers who leave. In fact, Russians themselves do not want to see foreign companies in their country – they started the campaign “Zamestim” (meaning “we will replace”, where the first cyrylic letter was deliberately replaced with a half-swastika russia uses as their war symbol). This campaign implies that they plan to replace imported goods with locally produced ones. If foreign companies are so willing to support Russian people, why don’t they support this campaign?
Third, “premediated bankruptcies” of foreign producers or retailers will not strengthen Russian economy because an enterprise is not only premises and goods. An enterprise is primarily technology, management and expertise. Without foreign managers and engineers those plants and supermarkets will not be worth anything. This is acknowledged even by the strongest supporters of Putin’s regime.
Fourth, very often those companies that cite “caring for their Russian employees” as the reason to remain in Russia have at the same time closed their Ukrainian production sites because of the war. E.g. Mondelez states that “We continue to prioritize the safety of our people and our operations remain closed in Ukraine…As a food company, we are scaling back all non-essential activities in Russia while helping maintain continuity of the food supply during the challenging times ahead. We will also continue to support our colleagues in the market who are facing great uncertainty.” Is it fair to deprive Ukrainians of their jobs (and Ukraine of its taxes) while at the same time supporting the jobs and paying taxes in the aggressor state? The same taxes that are then used to purchase weapons to bomb their Ukrainian employees?
Fifth, companies providing pharmaceuticals or medical goods refer to ethics stating that they would continue supplying patients in Russia with essential drugs. However, as explained above, thousands of people in Ukraine are left without medical help. Russian occupants deliberately block humanitarian convoys, destroy medical facilities; in some cases they did not allow pregnant women to go to maternity hospitals. Is this an ethical behaviour? We believe that it is not. We believe that all the pharmaceutical and healthcare companies that consider themselves “ethical” or “socially responsible” should immediately withdraw from Russia. If Russian patients need some medicines, they should ask their government to provide them with those medicines. Or they should turn to the Red Cross to which multinational companies donated huge amounts of money and which tried to help Russia to deport Ukrainians.
Sixth, some companies stated that they would donate their profits from Russian operations to Ukraine, and some already reported donations either to Ukraine or to international charities such as Red Cross, UNICEF, or Save the Children. While this charitable activity can be welcomed, a much more efficient way to help Ukraine would be to donate to local organizations that have much leaner bureaucracy and better understand the needs on the ground. Moreover, while making these donations they are also paying wages to the Russian employees and taxes to the Russian government which are then–directly or indirectly–used to buy weapons and kill more Ukrainians.
Thus any excuses that one may find for remaining in Russia can be easily dismissed. What these companies (and the others, which remain silent) are really doing is protecting their market shares and their profits. Protecting a few thousand lives and jobs in a country that killed tens of thousands since February 24th (and killed hundreds of thousands before that – in Ukraine, Syria, Chechnya, Georgia and other states) and caused millions to lose their jobs, houses, their entire lives is a hypocrisy and an extreme degree of cynicism.
Annex. Analysis of statements of companies that stayed in Russia
We analyzed 60 statements of companies who stay in Russia to see what companies put into them. Figure A1 shows what was mentioned in these statements. It shows that in more than a half of analyzed statements companies mentioned caring for Russian consumers in different forms (e.g. provision of essential goods, ethical issues, “putting patients first” etc). Some companies mentioned their consumers in general, without dividing them into Russian and Ukrainian. One company talked about consumers in CIS countries to whom products of plants based in Russia are delivered.
More than a half of the companies described helping their Ukrainian employees – providing financial support, helping to relocate etc. Almost two times less companies justified their stay in Russia by their responsibility to support Russian employees; some companies specified that these employees “face challenges”, “have no impact on the situation” and even “face threats of imprisonment, unsafe conditions, and countersanctions.” There were a few “exotic” statements, such as “donating seeds to Russian farmers to avoid global food crisis” or “caring for cocoa producing families”.
A lot of companies reported donations – to Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees and/or large international charities or humanitarian organizations.
Figure A2 shows that companies mostly call the war the war. Some of them went even further and used such words as ‘invasion’ or ‘brutal aggression’. 14 statements directly or indirectly called Russia an aggressor, although in direct statements the formulation was “Russian army” or “Russian government” rather than Russia. To the contrast, 13 companies (almost a quarter) used some euphemisms to describe the war, such as “conflict”, “situation in Ukraine” or “events in Ukraine”.
It was the BMD-4 with the Thales-made Catherine FC thermal imaging camera that took part in the shelling of Ukrainian civilian cars in Bucha.
I saw a post by volunteers on a social network, and together with my fellow lawyers we launched our own probe into the French manufacturer’s involvement in Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.
Oleksandr Dubilet,
Chairman of the Board of CB “PrivatBank” (1997-2016), Financial and banking expert
So-called exemplary company
In France, Thales is not just a public company. There are three arguments to support this assertion.
1) The company specializes in the manufacture of systems for military, aerospace and maritime purposes
2) The company’s shares are listed on the Paris Stock Exchange
3) It is not so much the private shareholder (the Dassault family with its 24.62% share) that is important, but the French government and its 25.67% share. Simply put, a company that is more than a quarter controlled by the French government, exports components that kill Ukrainians.
According to open sources, Thales supplied Catherine FC thermal imaging cameras to Russia, which were used to manufacture the Essa, Plissa and Sosna-U thermal sighting systems. They enhance the combat capabilities of modified Russian T-80, T-90, T-72 tanks and other military vehicles.
Conscious violators
After photo and video evidence of “fruitful” cooperation between Thales and Russia appeared on the Internet thanks to volunteers, my fellow lawyers and I have found real evidence that Thales supplied these combat components after the imposition of sanctions related to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea.
Since this model of equipment was created in 2016, foreign manufacturers had to supply components at least a year earlier. Consequently, Thales sold military goods and technologies to Russia after the introduction of the first wave of sanctions (Council Regulation (EU) No. 833/2014 of July 31, 2014).
Are these sanctions significant? Undoubtedly. In 2015, Thales failed to sign a $1.3 billion deal to supply two helicopter carriers to Russia. Instead, both ships were sold to Egypt.
I will also talk about a lesser-known episode of illegal but profitable cooperation between Thales and the aggressor state. The French company Sofradir, a subsidiary company of Thales, specializes in the manufacture of infrared detectors for military, space and commercial use.
According to NGO Disclose, in 2016, the company supplied 83 infrared detectors (S24) and 258 infrared detectors (S02) to Russia’s CJSC TPK Linkos.
What is Linkos? According to the Arms of Russia information agency, Linkos specializes in the development and production of computers and communications equipment, optical, optical and electronic and microwave systems and complexes, night vision equipment and quantum electronics products.
In addition, Sofradir supplied 138 infrared detectors (S10) to JSC NPO GIPO, the Russian state institute of applied optics, which develops and manufactures optical and electronic systems. Since 2008, GIPO has been a part of the Rostekhnologii state corporation.
Mutually beneficial cooperation between this subsidiary of Thales and Russian military institutions is evidenced by two decisions (documents 1 and 2) of the 2016 Inter-ministerial Commission for the Study of Military Exports (CIEMMG) of France. According to the documents found by our team, French officials allowed Sofradir to supply military technology and goods despite the sanctions.
In 2019, Sofradir and Ulis merged and created a new company – Lynred. The well-known Thales is a 50% shareholder in Lynred.
The conclusion is simple: Sofradir actually misled the Inter-ministerial Commission by concluding an additional agreement “to fulfill the contract.” The additional agreement extended the contract and aimed at circumventing sanctions for further supplies of military technology to Russia.
I and my colleagues found information that proves that Thales violated the sanctions in both the first (thermal imaging cameras) and the second (infrared detectors, through the subsidiary Sofradir) episodes, in the public domain (!). In my opinion, this illustrates the perception of sanctions very well. That is, the above French companies did not even bother to conceal evidence of their sanctions violations.
Demanding action
An EU Council decision bans the supply of dual-use goods and technology to Russia. However, you may be interested to know that this document has a loophole that reads as follows: the authorized state body may issue a license to supply such goods under contracts concluded before August 1, 2014.
And the French company Thales took full advantage of it, deliberately extending the old contracts through additional agreements and actually supplying military goods in 2015-2018.
My team of lawyers is working on each of two episodes of criminal cooperation between Thales and its subsidiary Sofradir with Russia. We have sent statements to the EU Council as the body that imposed the sanctions, as well as informing the law enforcement agencies, in particular, the French prosecutor’s office. Our goal is to open criminal cases based on these statements.
Having revealed the corporate structure of Thales and identified the shareholders (in particular, the French government), we plan to address the shareholders of this company, French banks, secondary monitoring bodies and stock exchanges and demand that they take appropriate action against sanctions violators.
As in the case of our legal “hunt” for the Belgian company New Lachaussee, which supplied ammunition equipment for the Kalashnikov concern, the purpose of international lawsuits against Thales is to punish violators of sanctions and show the toxicity of any cooperation with the aggressor state.
At a time when Ukrainians are dying for European values, Europe must be completely on our side.
Thales acknowledges in a press release on Saturday April 30 having delivered until 2019 to the Russian company Vomz “kits for assembling thermal cameras”namely infrared cameras, confirming information from the Parisian. The French defense group, however, ensures that it does not have “nothing sold since 2014” and “the application of European sanctions against Russia”.
“No new contract has been concluded with a Russian customer since the embargo”, adds Thales. Deliveries of new equipment made after 2014 concerned “contracts signed before July 2014”. “During the past few weeks, messages have been published on social networks showing our optronic equipment on board Russian military platforms”deplores Thales, who claims to share “the emotion aroused by these images”. But the group defends itself categorically.
“No deliveries have been made to Russia since the start of the conflict in Ukraine.”
Thales Group
The company also claims to have “taken the decision to cease its activities in Russia”. Thales claims to be “always strictly complied with French and international regulations, including concerning the application of the 2014 European sanctions against Russia”. “No defense equipment export contract has been signed with Russia since 2014”, says the company. The group “denies being in a joint venture with the Russian company Vomz”, to whom he sold these kits until 2014.
A senior Ukrainian official on Friday accused French defence electronics company Thales of violating European sanctions and selling Russia equipment that was used to kill civilians fleeing recent fighting outside Kyiv, claims strongly denied by Thales.
“A family was trying to escape but was killed by Russian murderers,” tweeted presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak. “Killed, as it is now proved, with French weapons sold in circumvention of sanctions in 2015.”
Reached by AFP, Thales, whose largest shareholder is the French state, denied violating the sanctions that were imposed after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
“Thales has always strictly complied with French and international regulations, including concerning the 2014 European sanctions against Russia,” the group said.
“No defence equipment export contract has been signed with Russia since 2014 and no delivery has been made to Russia since the start of the conflict in Ukraine”, said the company, adding that it has decided to cease operations in Russia.
In his Twitter post, Podolyak referenced a video made by Ukrainian blogger Pavlo Kashchuk, who examined a car found in the town of Bucha outside of Kyiv, where Ukraine accuses Russian forces of massacring hundreds of civilians.
Kashchuk said the car, in which a woman’s body was found, was riddled with holes from shells fired from armoured vehicles from a large distance.
“How could poorly trained Russian soldiers shoot so accurately with old post-Soviet equipment?” Kashchuk asked.
He said he found the answer to this question in the nearby town of Vorzel, where Ukrainian forces captured four of Russia’s BMD-4 armoured vehicles.
Kashchuk said those vehicles were equipped with sophisticated fire control systems, technology that had been sold to Russia by Thales.
In his video the blogger also showed a thermal camera which he says was recovered from an abandoned Russian tank. The Thales logo is visible on it, accompanied by the date 06/16 and the words “made in Russia.”
Kashchuk said it was assembled in Russia using Thales components.
“It’s just one of the many schemes allowing Western companies to circumvent the embargo and continue supplying the Russian army of evil with the most state-of-the-art military technologies,” he said.
The accusations follow a March report by the investigative outlet Disclose, which found that France had delivered military equipment, including thermal cameras, to Russia between 2015 and 2020.
The French Defence Ministry said it was fulfilling contracts concluded before the sanctions were adopted in July 2014, under the so-called grandfathering clause.
Pavlo Kashchuk, known as the founder of the infocar.ua project and host of the YouTube channel of the same name, published a video on it, shot after Bucha’s liberation from the ruscism occupiers. It shows not only traces of war crimes with the killing of civilians, but also abandoned equipment by retreating troops, which found French-made thermal imagers supplied by Thales Group after the imposition of sanctions against Russia.
The video begins with a demonstration of the cemetery of civilian cars taken to one place in Bucha. Paul draws attention to the holes from the 30-mm gun in the trunk lid of the Renault Sandero (in Europe, the car is sold as a Dacia Sandero) and their accuracy, despite the fact that the shots were fired from a great distance.
This 30-mm gun is installed on the BMD-4M (landing combat vehicle), entered service with the Russian army in 2016 (ie after the imposition of sanctions banning the supply of dual-use equipment to Russia). One of these BMD-4Ms was dropped by retreating racist troops in Bucha:
The modernization of the BMD-4M consists in the installation of equipment for the gunner, taking into account the stabilized sight in two planes, which has thermal imaging and rangefinder channels. This equipment allows the machine to fire at any time of day in any weather.
The equipment removed from the BMD-4M indicates a violation by Thales Group of the ban on the supply of dual-use equipment (ie, that can be used for military purposes).
The Thales logo is indicated on the equipment dismantled by the combat vehicle
In particular, a thermal imager is used, which allows the arrow to see the target in the dark, Catherine FC, made by this company. “It is allegedly going to the Russian plant in Vologda. That is, according to French drawings from components bought from the French,” – Kashchuk said in the video. — “And this is just one of the schemes that allow Western companies to circumvent the embargo and continue to supply the Russian army of evil with the latest military technology.”
According to the specifications, the Catherine FC thermal imager (note the date of manufacture – June 2016) allows you to create images with a resolution of 768×576 pixels and operates at a distance of up to 2.5 kilometers. The module itself weighs less than 3 kilograms with dimensions of 258x172x100 mm and is certified in accordance with the military standard MIL STD 810.
About Thales Group
Thales Group (pronounced “Thales”) has a history dating back to 1892 and until 2010 was called Thomson-CSF and named after the ancient Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus. Its headquarters are located in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. It employs about 68,000 people in more than 50 countries. In 2011, the company’s turnover was €13 billion. Fortune magazine ranked it among the world’s 500 largest companies, ranking 475th. Thales Group is ranked 11th in the world among companies engaged in the supply of military equipment. Since December 2014, Thales Group has been headed by Patrice Caine, who is also a member of the Board of Directors of Naval Group (since 2015) and L’Oréal (since 2018) and has received awards – bronze medal of national defense and the Order of Merit, and is also a cavalier of the Legion of Honor.
The fact that 27.1% of the company’s shares belong to the French government casts a shadow over the entire country, which appears to be a sponsor of terrorism that supports Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.
FRANCE, Germany and Italy side-stepped an arms embargo to sell weapons to Vladimir Putin that are being used to slaughter Ukrainians.
On a day of shame for the EU, it emerged ten member states sold hundreds of millions of pounds of military kit to Russia between 2015 and 2020.
Paris sent bombs, rockets and explosives, as well as thermal-imaging cameras for 1,000 tanks and infra-red detectors for jets.
Berlin sold what it called “dual-use equipment” including rifles, “special protection” vehicles and icebreaker vessels and Rome provided armoured cars.
EU states, including then-member Britain, hit Russia with a weapons embargo in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea.
But a loophole allowed countries and firms to fulfil contracts they had previously signed with Russia.
And a probe by Investigate Europe shows EU27 states issued more than 1,000 licences after the ban.
France went on to flog £130million of military kit to the Kremlin, Germany sold £100million and Italy made £19million.
In 2015, Rome authorised the sale of Lynce military all-terrain vehicles to Moscow – which have been seen in Ukraine since the war began by Italian TV channel La7.
Despite the EU imposing an embargo on weapon sales, investigative website Disclose reports that between 2015 and 2020, France issued 76 export licences to Russia for military equipment.
And according to a report by Investigate Europe, ten EU member states continued to send weapons to Russia after the embargo – with Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia and Spain on the list.
Figures from the EU Council Working Party on Conventional Arms Exports reveal the ten EU states exported military equipment worth a total of £291million to Russia between 2015 and 2020.
Out of the ten, France reportedly accounted for 44 per cent of sales, with aircraft, navigation systems, torpedoes and missiles among the equipment sent.
In 2015, French president François Hollande was pressured into ditching plans to flog two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships to Russia – but successive French governments went on to take advantage of the loophole.
Britain also sold weapons to Russia after the embargo was imposed, but only £1.7million worth.
And after dodging the Russian arms embargo, Germany was slammed by Kyiv’s mayor after offering to send 5,000 helmets to support Ukrainian forces against Putin’s troops.
Former boxer-turned politician Vitali Klitschko poked fun at the offer, asking if the nation would like to send pillows instead as Berlin refused to send weapons to Ukraine.
But just days into the invasion, Germany bowed to pressure and reversed its historic policy to not send weapons to conflict zones – offering to hand over 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defence systems to Ukraine
Meanwhile, as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine stalls with the US estimating some 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or captured since the conflict began, defiant Ukrainians have been seizing Russian equipment to use against them as the war rages on into its fourth week.
Volodymyr Zelensky has begged European leaders to send more weapons to help Ukrainians tirelessly defend their country as Russian forces continue to blast major cities.
The heroic leader urged leaders of the Joint Expeditionary Force on Tuesday to “help yourself by helping us” by sending more equipment.
“We all are the targets of Russia and everything will go against Europe if Ukraine won’t stand, so I would like to ask you to help yourself by helping us. ,” Zelensky said.
“You know the weapons we need. You know what kind of defence measures we need. You know that our need is fighter jets and without your support it would be very difficult
“‘We want you to help us and I would hope that you will be able to enhance that support and you will see how this will protect your security, your safety and how that will make a stable peace not only for us but for your countries.”
Zelensky said shipments of supplies from nations in Europe were being used up quickly as Ukrainian forces push captured Russian weapons and machinery into service.
It comes as the Ukrainian President again asked Washington and its NATO allies to impose a no-fly zone to ensure “Russia wouldn’t be able to terrorise our free cities”.
He addressed Joe Biden directly, saying: “I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”
Biden and Nato have resisted Zelensky’s pleas for direct involvement against Russia – warning it could lead to World War Three.
But the US President this week unveiled his latest package of aid to Ukraine to add to the £10.3billion in military and humanitarian aid already approved.
The US said they would provide long-range missile defence and Switchblade armed drones, which will allow Kyiv’s forces to better defend against Russian aircraft from a distance.
And the West has stepped up the range of powerful weapons being supplied to Ukraine, with Bayraktar TB2 drones, Stinger missiles and Portable anti-tank weapons being sent.
It comes as Putin’s troops continue to press their assault on major cities, with fresh missile strikes and shelling on the edges of Kyiv and the western city of Lviv.
Outside Lviv, black smoke billowed for hours after a strike early on Friday, which the mayor said hit a facility for repairing military aircraft near the city’s international airport, also damaging a bus repair facility.
Early morning barrages also hit on the northern edges of the capital, with at least one person killed by shelling on Podil, a neighborhood just north of downtown Kyiv, according to emergency services.
Meanwhile, Mariupol is being flattened by a squadron of 25 Russian bombers flying sorties over the city every day — with 90 per cent of all buildings damaged or destroyed.
Around 14,000 elite Russian troops surround the city, with many of the 400,000 residents — trapped for a 17th day without power and running water — drinking from puddles to survive.
Missiles, aircraft, rockets, torpedoes, bombs. Russia continued to buy EU weapons until at least 2020. Despite the ongoing embargo, ten member states exported € 346 million worth of military equipment, according to public data analysed by Investigate Europe. Some of these weapons could be used against Ukraine now.
“Our destinies are linked. Ukraine is part of the European family. Vladimir Putin’s aggression is an aggression against all the principles we hold dear” said EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Last week’s Versailles summit showed how the European Union is trying to unite after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Yet, just over a year ago, Vladimir Putin and his army were still good customers of the European arms industry. A third of the European Union’s member states exported arms to the Russian Federation, according to data from the official Working Party of the Council on Conventional Arms Exports (COARM), analysed by Investigate Europe.
This data from all EU-27 official arms exports registers shows that between 2015 and 2020, at least 10 EU member states have exported a total of €346 million worth of arms to Russia.s. France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia and Spain – to different extents – have sold “military equipment” to Russia. Our investigation shows that the term “military equipment” is broad and can include missiles, bombs, torpedoes, guns and rockets, land vehicles and ships.
An embargo full of loopholes
This is despite an embargo of the European Union that prohibits arms sales to Russia and which has been in place since 2014:
The direct or indirect sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts therefore, to Russia by nationals of Member States or from the territories of Member States or using their flag vessels or aircraft, shall be prohibited whether originating or not in their territories.
COUNCIL DECISION 2014/512/CFSP of 31 July 2014
This decision followed the annexation of Crimea and the proclamation of the Donbas separatist republics. However, in the EU, the arms trade continued, as official data shows.
Many of the EU countries that exported weapons to Russia used a legal loophole in the EU regulations to continue their ongoing trade. The Working Party on Conventional Arms Exports of the Council answered IE’s questions, explaining that “the EU arms embargo contains the following exemption: contracts concluded before 1 August 2014 or ancillary contracts necessary for the execution of such contracts. The figures you find in the database should fall under this exemption. Member States are responsible to ensure compliance with the arms embargo and the EU Common Position.” That’s why, COARM concludes, “Member States are not arming Russia.”
But the conclusion is not that simple. Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), makes a distinction between the regular economic trade and arms exports. “Weapons are a part of our foreign policy, not of economic policy. Political reasons are the main thing.”
According to the COARM data, after 2014 Member States issued more than a thousand licences (editor’s note: general authorisations for arms deals), while barely a hundred were refused. And at the top of the list of European exporters? France.
France, top exporter of arms to Russia
As reported by Disclose, France has sold €152 million worth of military equipment to Russia. A figure confirmed by Investigate Europe’s analysis, and places France far ahead of its neighbours, exporting 44% of European arms to Russia.
Our investigation found that since 2015 France has given its authorisation to export military equipment belonging to the category “bombs, rockets, torpedoes, missiles, explosive charges”, weapons directly lethal but also “imaging equipment, aircraft with their components and ‘lighter-than-air vehicles’”.
According to Disclose, French exports also include “thermal imaging cameras for more than 1,000 Russian tanks, as well as navigation systems and infrared detectors for fighter jets and combat helicopters. The Kremlin bought these from Safran and Thales, whose main shareholder is the French state. This equipment can now be found on-board the land vehicles, fighters and helicopters operating on the Ukrainian front.
The number of licences issued by France jumped in 2015, immediately after the embargo (see data visualisation). In 2014, according to our research, the French authorities were still giving their authorisation to send to Russia “chemical agents”, “biological agents”, “riot control agents”, “radioactive materials, related equipment, components and material”.
Questioned on Friday 4t March by IE, the Ministry of the Armed Forces took 11 days to reply that France is committed “to apply very strictly” the 2014 embargo. The missiles, rockets, torpedoes and bombs sold to Russia over the past five years are “in a word, a residual flow, resulting from past contracts (…) and which has gradually died out”, assures the French government.
Germany: €122 million for guns and vessels
According to information collected by Investigate Europe, Germany exported €121.8 million worth of military equipment to Russia. This represents 35% of all EU arms exports to Russia. It mainly consisted of icebreaker vessels, but also included rifles, and “special protection” vehicles which were sent to Russia. The German government has not responded to questions about this from Investigate Europe.
The German exports are labelled “dual use”. This is why even German politicians critical of the weapons exports and pacifist NGOs contacted by Investigate Europe don’t consider the exports a legal breach of the embargo.
Hannah Neumann, member of the European Parliament of the German Green Party, and member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, is upset by the situation. “Each country exports according to its own will, we need a common policy on arms exports, based on law and transparency with the involvement of the European Parliament (…)”, she told us “I am tired of backdoor deals to the benefit of only the arms industry and at the detriment of joint EU foreign policy – and peace“.
Italy: Land vehicles on the Ukrainian frontline
In third place on the list of exporters COARM data shows Italy, which has sold €22.5 million worth of military equipment to Russia between 2015 and 2020. According to our investigation, the first big contract signed with the Federation happened in 2015, when the government of Matteo Renzi authorised the Italian company Iveco to sell €25 million worth of land vehicles to Russia. Investigate Europe was able to read the “final authorisation” delivered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the minister at that time was Paolo Gentiloni, now European Commissioner). In the end, our research shows that only €22.5 million worth of equipment went to Russia. But the war vehicles – the Lynce model, produced by IVECO – were clearly spotted by a journalist on the TV channel La 7 on the Ukrainian frontline, in the beginning of March. These vehicles were assembled in one of the three factories that Iveco has in Russia, but assembled from Italian parts.
Giorgio Beretta, Analyst at the Permanent Observatory on Light Weapons (OPAL), told IE:
“In arms export it’s mainly a political decision, the Italian government could have refused, then go into a legitimate trial with the arms company, and a judge would have taken into account the political situation and the need to respect a European agreement.”
After 2015, the flow of weapons and ammunition exported to Russia from Italy decreased, only to rise again in 2021.r. According to the Italian statistical office, Istat, data for foreign trade, between January and November 2021 Italy delivered €21.9 million worth of ‘arms and ammunition to Russia. This included ‘common arms’ such as rifles, pistols, ammunition and accessories.
How is it possible that six years after the embargo went into force, that the Italian government could still licence so many arms? These weapons – semi-automatic rifles and ammunition – were sold to the Russian civilian market, which includes private security, para-military and special State bodies.
Small exporters, big weapons
Looking at what other Member States were exporting to Russia in this period, some of them also had a constant flow of exports, albeit on a much smaller scale than the big suppliers. The Czech Republic exported “aircraft, lighter than air vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, aero-engines and aircraft equipment” every year between 2015 and 2019.
Austria also continued to export military equipment to Russia every year, “smooth-bore weapons with a calibre of less than 20mm, other arms and automatic weapons with a calibre of 12,7mm” and “ammunition and fuse setting devices, and specially designed components”.
Bulgaria had two deals, in 2016 and 2018, exporting “vessels of war, (surface or underwater) special naval equipment, accessories, components and other surface vessels” and “technology” for the “development”, “production” or “use” of items controlled in the EU Common Military List”, worth €16.5 million. Finland, Spain, Slovakia and Croatia each had one export to Russia, of a much smaller amount, in the previous years.
But Europe is not alone in having to deal with contradictions regarding their exports. According to SIPRI’s data on arms exports, there’s an even stranger fact: it was not just the EU selling arms to Russia after the annexation of Crimea – Russia also remained the second biggest market for weapons exports from Ukraine.
ByLaure Brillaud, Ana Curic, Maria Maggiore, Leïla Miñano and Nico Schmidt
STAGGERING unearthed data has revealed several NATO countries – including the UK – have supplied weapons and military equipment to Russia worth hundreds of millions of pounds, some of which are likely to be used against Ukraine today.
NATO military alliance members including the UK, France and Germany, are being accused of supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by continuing to supply weapons to the Russian military up until at least 2020, despite an embargo following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. According to data unearthed from the Working Party on Conventional Arms Exports (COARM), a third of the European Union’s member states have exported weapons to Russia in recent years.
The COARM data, first analysed by Investigate Europe, reveals a staggering €346million (£290million) worth of military equipment – including aircraft, vehicles, missiles, rockets, torpedos and bombs – was exported to Russia from at least 10 EU countries between 2015 and 2020.
The report reveals several “loopholes” in an embargo against issuing weapons to Moscow after the 2014 Crimea annexation which were exploited by European countries.
Under the terms of the embargo, existing contracts could be fulfilled provided that they had been agreed to before 2014 – allowing nations to provide Russia’s military with weapons until 2020.
France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia and Spain are all implicated in the report, with France singled out as the top exporter of arms to Russia.
Additionally, data from the UK Government’s Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) shows the UK may also have taken advantage of this loophole.
So what has the UK supplied?
According to the ECJU data – which was compiled by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) group – the UK granted 30 licences to export £3.7million worth of goods classes “for military purpose” to Russia between the 2014 embargo and September 2018.
Most of the licences were given in 2014, with additional licences in 2015 and 2016 with the last being in 2018 – according to the data which runs to the end of September 2021.
These included £1.4million to fund military aircraft, helicopter and drone components, as well as a further £1.2million worth of ammunition.
A total of £780,000 was approved for electronic equipment and £312,000 on small arms, while another £26,000 was paid out for equipment and test models and £2,900 on imaging equipment.
Note these figures do not necessarily reflect the actual value of good exported – the ECJU only collects data on the value of goods that companies were given permission to export, regardless of whether these contracts are eventually fulfilled.
Additionally, companies can be awarded ‘dual use’ licences for both military and non-military purposes by the Government, which weren’t halted under the 2014 embargo.
Including dual-purpose licences, a total of 1,129 licences have been granted to Russia since the annexing of Crimea, taking the total combined value to £1.2billion.
On February 24, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he would suspend dual-purpose licences to Russia as part of a package of sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine.
A UK Government spokesperson said: “The UK has not granted any licences to Russia that would be inconsistent with the sanctions measures imposed in July 2014.
“Following the illegal invasion of Ukraine, we suspended approval of new export licences for dual-use items to Russia with immediate effect.
“The UK takes its export control responsibilities extremely seriously. All licences not consistent with sanctions measures will be revoked and military exports to Russia remain prohibited.”
What about the rest of the EU?
According to the COARM data, France has emerged as the top exporter to Russia since 2014, with 44 percent of European arms to Russia originating there.
In total, the country issued more than 70 licences worth €152million (£128million) from 2014.
According to the Investigate Europe report on the figures, France has given authorisation to export items in the category of “bombs, rockets, torpedoes, missiles, explosive charges” alongside “imaging equipment, aircraft with their components and ‘lighter-than-air vehicles’”.
Furthermore, a report into the statistics by the independent Franch outlet Disclose showed that thermal imaging cameras and infrared sensors were purchased from French shareholder companies Safran and Thales.
This equipment is reported to adorn Russian tanks and fighter jets operating on the Ukrainian frontline in today’s brutal war.
Like the UK, the data shows most French licences were granted directly after the annexation of Crimea and have slowly declined since 2015 under the embargo.
France’s Ministry of the Armed Forces told Investigate Europe the country is committed “to apply very strictly” to the 2014 embargo and that weapons given to Russia since were “a residual flow, resulting from past contracts… and which has gradually died out”.
Germany also tops the list, with the figures showing the nation exported 35 percent of all EU arms to Russia, totalling €121.8million (£102.25million) worth of equipment.
This included icebreaker vessels, rifles and “special protection” vehicles.
German exports were largely granted under ‘dual use’ licences – as such, the exports are not deemed to be in breach of the 2014 sanctions, Investigate Europe said.
In third place, the COARM figures show Italy has sold weapons to Russia totalling €22.5million (£18.8million) with the first contract signed in 2015 authorising up to €25million (£20million) worth of land vehicles parts.
Such vehicles have been seen on the Ukrainian front line by the Italian TV channel La7.
Elsewhere in the data, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia and Spain are also implied in arms sales to Russia.
$134 million worth of military equipment shipped between 2014 and 2020, despite EU sanctions on Russia, according to local media
Germany shipped €122 million ($134 million) worth of military equipment to Russia despite the EU arms embargo in effect since 2014, local media has reported. Nine other EU member states also exported military goods during that time, said the report.
German arms exports to Russia between 2014 and 2020 included special protection vehicles and icebreaker vessels but also lethal weapons such as rifles, according to a report by Investigate Europe.
Economy Ministry spokesperson Annike Einhorn told reporters on Friday that since the EU’s arms embargo in 2014, Germany has not granted any new licenses for exports of military equipment to Russia.
But she was unable to account for the deliveries that continued until 2020.
According to the report, between 2014 and 2020 at least 10 EU member states exported a total of €346 million worth of arms to Russia.
France was the top exporter of arms to Russia, with €152 million worth of military equipment, followed by Germany (€122 million) and Italy (€22 million).
Following Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the EU decided to ban export or transfer of any arms and related material to Russia.
France, Germany and Italy sold hundreds of millions worth of arms to Russia
They sold military kit to the Kremlin for years despite an EU embargo banning it
They were three of at least 10 countries to use a loophole to get past the ban
France alone sold €152million out of a total €350million (£293million) exported
France, Germany and Italy used a loophole in a ban of exporting arms to Russia to send the Kremlin €296million worth of military equipment that is now being used against Ukraine.
They were just three of at least 10 EU member states to export almost €350million (£293million) in equipment that can include missiles, rockets, ships and bombs.
It should have been impossible to do so owing to an EU embargo that banned selling arms to Russia following the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
A T-72B3 is one of the tanks French military kit could be equipped on. Pictured: A T-72B3 during a military drill in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 14, 2022, ten days before the war in Ukraine started
France, Germany and Italy used a loophole in a ban of exporting arms to Russia to send the Kremlin €296million worth of military equipment that is now being used against Ukraine. They were just three of at least 10 EU member states to export almost €350million (£293million) in equipment that can include missiles, rockets, ships and bombs
The EU banned ’the direct or indirect sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related material of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts therefore, to Russia’ eight years ago.
However, countries were able to sell hundreds of millions of pounds worth of kit to Russia despite the ban using a backdoor technicality that permitted contacts signed before August 1, 2014, or additional contracts that would help conclude those deals.
France was responsible for the majority of exports, raking in €152 million in sales, as revealed by Disclose.
Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian Su-30SM jet, which could have had French infrared kit on board, over the outskirts of Kyiv, with wreckage falling on a house and leaving several people injured
A Russian helicopter is shot down somewhere over Kyiv (left), while the wreckage of what appears to be a jet falls from the skies near the capital (right). European detecting systems may have been attached to Russian helicopters
That amounts to 44 per cent of European arms exported to Russia, as reported by Investigate Europe.
From 2015 French authorities allowed the sale of weapons that fell into the category of bombs, rockets, torpedoes, missiles and explosive charges to Russia.
Other exports included thermal imaging cameras for more than 1,000 Russian tanks, including T-80BVMs and T-72B3s, and infrared spotters for attack jets and helicopters.
Even in 2014 France was still allowing the sale of chemical and biological weapons to Moscow.
Germany came in at a close second, exporting 35 per cent of all EU arms to Putin with €121.8million sold.
Italy sold the third most, exporting €22.5million from 2015 to 2020. They also allegedly sold €21.9million in arms and ammunition to Russian civilians and paramilitary groups between January and November 2021.
Britain also sold £1.7million worth of army to Russia after the EU ban was imposed.
President Zelensky of Ukraine has maintained calls for more Western support, weapons as well as a no-fly zone as Putin’s invasion today entered its fourth week.
Vladimir Putin today held a huge rally to prop-up support for his invasion of Ukraine in front of thousands of ‘Z’ flag-waving Russians crammed into Moscow’s Luzhniki World Cup stadium.
The pro-war event saw the Russian talk about the success of his ‘special operation’ in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin today held a huge rally to prop-up support for his invasion of Ukraine in front of thousands of ‘Z’ flag-waving Russians crammed into Moscow’s Luzhniki World Cup stadium
Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.
As his bombs continued to fall just hundreds of miles away in Ukraine, Putin boasted of Russia and Crimea’s ‘shared destiny’, and praised the peninsula’s people for voting in a referendum to be part of Russia – which was held while it was still occupied by Russian troops.
‘We are united by the same destiny,’ he said of the people of Russia and Crimea. ‘This is how the people thought and that’s what they were guided by when they had the referendum in Sevastopol.
‘They want to share their historical destiny with their motherland Russia – let us congratulate them on this occasion, it is their occasion. Congratulations,’ he said to huge cheers.
Putin repeated false claims about neo-Nazis in Ukraine, a line he has used repeatedly in an attempt to justify his invasion – despite Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky being Jewish, and far-right parties enjoying almost no political support in the country.
France continued to issue arms export licences to Russia after the 2014 embargo, investigative website Disclose has revealed.
According to leaked documents, French companies delivered arms to Russia after the EU imposed sanctions, including an arms embargo, against Russia in 2014. France has since issued more than 70 licences to export military equipment to companies worth €152 million.
Contacted by EURACTIV France, the Armed Forces ministry confirmed that France “allowed “the execution of certain contracts concluded before 2014”, something the EU embargo against Russia allowed.
According to the ministry, other European countries did the same. Additional export licences the ministry considered problematic like those for Mistral fighter jets had not been fulfilled.
But equipment delivered after 2014 would have enabled Russia’s army and air force to modernise its vehicles, notably with cameras and navigation systems for aircraft, Disclose reported. According to the ministry, this is a “residual flow from past contracts […] that has gradually died out” and is mentioned in annual reports to parliament.
The latest report to parliament on arms deliveries from 2021 shows a considerable decrease since 2016 in the number of delivery licences granted by France, both in terms of number and value of equipment delivered, with 2020 seeing the lowest figure of around €300,000.
Since 2018, Russia has not placed any more arms orders despite being France’s largest buyer from 2011, the report states.
A third of European Union (EU) member states exported weapons to Russia after the 2014 embargo banning them, according to data from the working group, which records all military exports from the 27, analyzed by Investigate Europe.
The data, released today in the newspaper Public, indicate that 10 EU countries exported weapons to Russia after the July 2014 embargo, which prohibits “the direct or indirect sale, supply, transfer or export of weapons and related material”. The 2014 embargo followed the annexation of Crimea and the proclamation of the breakaway republics of Donbass six months earlier.Every year, the 27 member states submit their data to the Council of the EU Working Group on Conventional Arms Exports, COARM.
Data analyzed by the Investigate Europe consortium indicates that between 2015 and 2021 at least 10 member states exported weapons to Russia worth a total of 346 million euros.
According to the consortium’s investigation, some European Union countries used a legal loophole in regulations to continue their trade.
The embargo “does not apply to contracts and agreements, nor to ongoing negotiations carried out before August 1, 2014, nor to the supply of spare parts and services necessary for the maintenance and security of existing capacities,” according to the consortium.
COARM explained in a response sent to Investigate Europe that “the EU arms embargo contains the following exemption: contracts concluded before 1 August 2014 or accessory contracts for the performance of such contracts. should be covered by this exemption. Member States are responsible for ensuring compliance with the arms embargo and the EU Common Position”.According to COARM, member states are not arming Russia.
Investigate Europe’s analysis puts France far ahead of EU partners, with 44% of sales to Russia.
Since 2015, France has issued export licenses for “bombs, rockets, torpedoes, missiles, explosive charges”, but also “imaging equipment, planes with their components and drones”.
According to the survey, in 2014 French arms dealers authorized the shipment to Russia of “toxic chemical or biological agents, riot control agents and radioactive substances”.
After France comes Germany, which, according to the consortium, exported 121.8 million euros to Russia, representing 35% of total exports.Behind France and Germany are also Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Slovakia and Spain, but with lower sales. Portugal is not part of this group.
Three EU-based firms are suspected of trying to smuggle arms to Belarus and Russia, in what might be the tip of a larger black market.
Czech firm Česká zbrojovka tried to export over 100 rifles and pistols via Moldova to Russia in 2020, according to a Moldovan document seen by EUobserver.
The shipment included ‘CZ TSR’-model sniper rifles, which can be used for sport or by special police.
Hungarian firm De Fango and Slovak firm XXeurope also tried to export hundreds of thousands of ammunition cartridges via Moldova to Belarus at about the same time, the document indicated.
The EU imposed arms embargoes on Belarus and Russia in 2011 and 2014.
And a Moldovan liaison officer shared the information – a 12-page PowerPoint presentation created by Moldovan law-enforcement authorities – with an EU diplomat in Chișinău in July to raise the alarm.
It also named Moldovan arms firm Cartuș, a Russian company called Alliance, and a Belarusian one called Outdoor Team in the alleged scheme to bypass EU sanctions.
“What are the documents required in EU countries to export [military items] to non-EU countries?”, the Moldovan document asked.
“Is circumventing [EU] embargoes by using states [Moldova] that have not ratified the embargo criminalised or entails only pecuniary liability?,” it also said.
Moldova’s foreign ministry confirmed one of the cases to EUobserver, saying: “The [Moldovan] government … stopped an attempt to export civilian ammunitions to Belarus”.
“They were confiscated and are currently being kept on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. The judiciary … has opened an investigation into the case, followed by several searches last week,” it said on Tuesday (5 October).
“The ammunitions were imported from Hungary, but originally produced in Finland and Switzerland,” Moldova added, widening the list of potential EU culprits.
Moldova was “open to collaboration with any EU institution or EU member state agency investigating this case,” the ministry told EUobserver.
“The [prime minister Natalia] Gavrilița-government … has made it a priority to fight against corruption and to clean state institutions,” it also said.
Slovakia corroborated fishy goings on at XXeurope.
“We can confirm that XXeurope applied for an export licence for ammunition with a declared end-user in Moldova (for the civilian market) in April 2020. After thorough examination of the application, the Slovak MFA [ministry of foreign affairs] decided not to grant a permission for export,” it said.
“Slovakia applies strict control in arms exports,” it added.
“Czechia also fully implements all EU or UN arms embargoes,” its foreign ministry told EUobserver.
The Hungarian foreign ministry said it “complies … with the rules on arms embargo and other restrictive measures adopted by the United Nations or the European Union”.
Czech firm Česká zbrojovka told EUobserver after this story was already published “it has not supplied any of its products subject to international sanctions to either Russia or Belarus, while such sanctions have been in place” and “not authorised any of its customers or business partners to make any such sales”.
De Fango, the Hungarian arms company, told EUobserver it “does not supply goods to Russia and Belarus”.
“All deliveries by our company are carried out exclusively with the permission of the competent state authorities of Hungary, observing all Hungarian laws and EU laws,” it said.
XXeurope, the Slovak firm, which is located in Žilina in north-west Slovakia, did not list a phone number or email address.
Moldovan company Cartuș denied wrongdoing in a statement also sent after this article was published.
Belarusian firm Outdoor Team, which is located in an industrial estate outside Minsk, did not reply.
A man who answered when EUobserver phoned Russian firm Alliance in St Petersburg declined to identify himself. But he said: “We don’t have any interest to talk about this problematic [sic]. It’s too big emotion [sic]. We don’t need to talk with you. Good day. Excuse me”.
EU light
For its part, the EU foreign service recently asked Bratislava, Budapest, and Prague to shed light on the affair in the EU Council, where member states meet.
The European Commission and Europol, the joint EU police agency in The Hague, have also been seized of the Moldova re-export scheme, according to internal EU documents seen by EUobserver.
“Moldovan authorities made a presentation about possible cases of violation of arms embargoes on Russia and Belarus from Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia,” a recent internal EU foreign-service email said, referring to Chișinău’s PowerPoint document.
“The alleged scheme involves manufacturers from these countries which exported weapons (pistols and rifles) or ammunitions to Moldova and then re-exported to Russia and Belarus,” the email added.
The EU foreign service declined to comment when asked if it was pursuing an investigation.
“In cases where the EEAS [EU External Action Service] hears about a potential case of violation of EU arms embargoes, it informs the relevant EU member state(s) and requests the necessary information in order to investigate the allegations and ensure implementation,” its spokesman said.
But the revelation of the Moldova scheme posed the question if there was a wider black market in EU arms to embargoed states.
And the EU foreign-service email highlighted a potential loophole in the arms-control regime.
“EU sanctions apply in the territory of the EU and third states [such as Moldova] cannot be found liable of violation of EU sanctions,” it said.
“In case of alignment of third countries on EU sanctions, it is for the third country to decide on the course of action under its own national law,” it added.
For the Czech foreign ministry, the existing rules worked fine.
“There is no loophole in EU arms embargoes – if any end-user in the third country re-exports arms to embargoed countries, then it constitutes a clear breach of EU law and it is subject to an investigation,” it told EUobserver.
But EU guns and riot-control equipment have turned up in Belarus before.
These included German-made pistols brandished by Belarusian police against pro-democracy protesters last September, according to German broadcaster ZDF.
And they included Czech-made stun grenades used against crowds last year, some of which caused serious injuries, according to US think-tank the Atlantic Council.
The EU also has arms embargoes on Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
Symbolic?
But the Moldova-Belarus scheme showed that some of the EU measures were “just symbolic”, one EU security source commented.
“In general, the flow of arms and ammo to Belarus and Russia [from EU countries] is wider [than the Moldova scheme], including other military equipment,” the source said.
Sometimes, the devil was in the detail of individual EU arms bans, which contained derogations.
And for its part, the Czech Republic took an interest in tweaking EU rules on arms to Russia earlier this year.
“Coest discussed the CZ [Czech] proposal concerning a modification of the scope of the [Russia] arms embargo,” a memo dated 22 July from the EU Council’s Working Party on Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Coest) to its Working Party of Foreign Relations Counsellors (Relex), said.
But if anybody misbehaved, they should have known better, because another EU memo, dated 14 May 2019 and also seen by EUobserver, spelled out the details of the Russia and Belarus bans.
Some types of “civilian firearms” could be sold to Russia, the letter from Relex to the Council’s Working Party on Conventional Arms Exports said.
But nothing should be sold to Belarus because its EU sanctions included “restrictions on equipment used for internal repression,” while the EU sanctions on Russia did not, Relex said.
The European Union’s poorly co-ordinated arms export policy is undermining Europe’s security, its foreign policy and its defence industry.
The EU’s arms export policy should have three aims. First, arms control, in order to keep arms out of the wrong hands. Second, targeted arms exports to allies and countries that share the EU’s security challenges. Third, supporting the development of European military technology.
The Union’s current arms export regime, the ‘Common Position’, sets out eight criteria that member-states must test export licenses against, such as respect for international humanitarian law in the destination country. But because defence is considered a matter of national sovereignty, the Common Position is not implemented or enforced at the EU level.
The recent spat over arms exports to Saudi Arabia – Berlin ceased arms exports to the kingdom, to the chagrin of Paris and London – exposed how national arms export decisions are often driven by different political, economic and industrial concerns. Such disunity makes it harder for Europe to help resolve conflicts or influence the behaviour of third countries.
Arms export policies differ across European countries because there is little consensus on the threats to the EU or on the Union’s interests. This has been evident in the EU’s foreign policy towards Syria and Venezuela. In May 2013, the EU’s 28 foreign ministers failed to reach a consensus on renewing the embargo on arms sales to Syria, with some member-states vying to arm rebel groups. And when anti-government protests erupted in Venezuela in early 2017, EU member-states spent months debating whether or not to intervene, allowing the situation to deteriorate significantly before finally agreeing on a sanctions package that included an arms embargo. In both cases, the EU found itself unable to seize its opportunity to alleviate the situation.
Exporting to third countries allows defence companies to enlarge their customer base and create economies of scale. At the same time it raises the bar for European firms to make more competitive products. By combining stricter export controls with more research and development spending, the EU would create incentives for defence companies to improve technology while reducing death, injury and destruction outside the EU.
Member-states will only join forces to develop new military equipment or weapon systems if they trust each other to provide the necessary components in times of crisis – to customers both inside and outside the EU. Without a reliable and consistent arms export policy at European level, the EU’s recent high-profile initiatives to improve European defence capabilities risk falling flat.
A truly common EU arms export policy would require a supervisory body controlled by the European Commission to report violations of the Common Position by member-states. The Commission could refer member-states that refused to follow the rules to the European Court of Justice. But such a radical overhaul would require changes to the EU treaties – and there is no appetite among member-states to surrender their autonomy.
However, there are smaller steps that the EU can take without treaty changes that would more closely align member-states’ arms exports regimes:
specify what constitutes a ‘clear risk’ or ‘serious violation’ in the Common Position, make it explicit that existing licenses can be suspended or revoked, and make reporting obligations more stringent;
help member-states implement stronger ‘end-use’ controls to ensure arms do not end up in unintended hands;
clarify terms in the EU’s regulation on ‘dual-use’ goods (those with both a civilian and military use such as cyber-surveillance technology), and encourage information exchange between member-states;
reach inter-governmental binding commitments to abide by the EU’s toughened export criteria between some member-states, especially France and Germany, which would put greater pressure on laxer member-states.
Together, the EU’s member-states are second only to the US in the volume of arms they export.1 But EU arms export policy is poorly co-ordinated. The divergence is weakening Europe’s ability to achieve its foreign policy objectives, undermining not only its credibility as a principled, values-driven power but also its recent high-profile initiatives to improve European defence capabilities.
Europeans recently fell out over arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Following the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, Germany decided to suspend all arms exports to the kingdom. Other European countries including Finland, Denmark and Norway had already taken this decision following the devastating Saudi-led intervention in Yemen in 2015. France and the UK, however, sharply criticised Germany and pressed Chancellor Angela Merkel to revoke the decision.
Too often, arms exports are driven by political, economic and industrial concerns, rather than by the EU’s own laws and guidelines. Governments are not only concerned with national security and regional stability, but also with facilitating the exports of domestic defence companies, which generate profits, jobs and tax revenues. Thus the allure of large arms contracts can skew a country’s foreign policy.
The Saudi case underlines the need for a co-ordinated European arms export policy, which should have three strands. The first is arms control: keeping arms and dual-use goods out of the wrong hands, that is, state or non-state actors that could use them to violate international law or create instability.2 The second is targeted arms exports: selling military equipment to actors with shared security challenges. The third strand is the arms industry itself: a consistent, predictable and shared arms export policy would help support European capability development and foster a stronger European defence industry.
Arms exports have been repeatedly excluded from EU treaty provisions. Member-states are unwilling to surrender their autonomy in this area of defence policy, which is guarded as a matter of national sovereignty. Attempts by the EU to co-ordinate national policies have repeatedly failed. The Council of the EU is currently reviewing the EU’s guidelines on arms exports: now is the time for a closer look at the EU’s arms export regime.
This policy brief argues in favour of an effective common European arms export policy, examining its potential to support foreign policy through several case studies, and how it can support the EU’s ambition to build a strong European defence industrial base. We assess the EU’s current arms export regime, and ask whether a greater role for the EU in arms export regulation is possible and compatible with member-states’ interests. Finally, we make recommendations on how Europe’s arms export policy could be improved.
Why does the EU need an arms export policy?
A genuinely common policy would help prevent weapons made in the EU from being used to undermine stability or violate international humanitarian and human rights law. It would also help the EU to promote regional stability, protect allies and friendly states, and strengthen Europe’s defence industry.
1. Control: Preventing weapons falling into the ‘wrong’ hands
By restricting arms supplies, the EU can attempt to change a state’s behaviour. Arms embargoes can constrain aggressive behaviour by depriving a country of military resources. Restricting arms exports can also send a strong signal condemning human rights abuses or violations of international humanitarian law.
Arms embargoes can constrain aggressive behaviour by depriving a country of military resources.
Politicians sometimes oppose arms embargoes on the basis that the target state will simply switch to an alternative, possibly less ethical, supplier.3 But switching suppliers is costly, and may leave the target state with multiple incompatible weapons systems. Such obstacles might end up delaying or constraining its behaviour. At the very least, an embargo stops the Union contributing to a humanitarian crisis or atrocity.
The effect is much greater if member-states work together. Take Germany’s 2018 ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. There are good reasons for Europeans to stop exporting arms to countries like Saudi Arabia that are involved in an active conflict with desperate humanitarian consequences. The debate in Germany, however, did not centre on the violation of the EU’s arms export regime, the 2008 Common Position, but instead on pacifist principles and the consequences of German history.4 The episode was a missed opportunity: Berlin chose to take a stand on its own rather than work with other EU member-states to arrive at a European position.
At the same time, the impact of arms embargoes should not be overstated. Alone, they are ineffective in changing state behaviour. Arms embargoes are particularly poor at preventing human rights abuses and crackdowns on democracy. The most effective embargoes are usually accompanied by other measures – economic sanctions hit countries far harder.5
2. Export: Putting weapons in the ‘right’ hands
Europeans sometimes export to strategic partners or allies in crisis-prone regions in the hope of contributing to regional stability. For instance, the German government is donating 50 Marder tanks to Jordan to protect its borders against Islamist militant groups.6
Exporting arms to conflict zones is a risky strategy, and should always form part of a comprehensive support programme, including training security forces about how to use the arms in line with international law. Supplying arms can alter regional dynamics in unpredictable ways, making a previously militarily weak country more belligerent, as seen with US arms sales to Iran in the 1970s.
European arms and equipment can, however, be exported to support countries struggling with globally significant security challenges. Maritime security, for instance, is crucial for Europe’s prosperity and stability: 50 per cent of EU external trade is transported by sea, and maritime crime in the forms of theft, smuggling, piracy and terrorism is widespread. EU member-states can assist countries in their attempts to combat piracy by selling them naval equipment.
Arms exports can also ensure that European allies and partners maintain technological parity with or superiority over shared adversaries. This strategy is already being pursued in Asia. To counterbalance Chinese dominance in the region, the US and some EU countries are exporting arms to countries like Indonesia: the Dutch company Damen, for example, exported two Sigma naval frigates to the Indonesian navy in 2017 and 2018. Arms exports can also increase interoperability and make it easier to conduct joint operations with partners.
3. Supporting the EU’s defence industry
If Europe is to become a credible defence player, it needs to have a strong defence industry. But a competitive defence industry requires a coherent and credible EU arms export policy.
First, EU defence policy can help companies become less dependent on exports, and more selective about who to export to. To cope with the relatively low national-level defence spending in Europe in recent years, and with the fragmentation of the market, companies have prioritised commercially attractive dual-use capabilities – which can be used for both military and civilian objectives – or have shifted away from their home market and focused instead on exports. A business model that relies on exports means that restrictions on arms exports immediately endanger jobs. And since European countries tend to ‘buy national’, the main export markets for European arms are often in countries outside the EU, rather than in other member-states. As a result, European industries at times prioritise the capability needs of non-European customers over those of EU states.7
At the same time, pursuing a strict ‘buy EU’ policy would make it more difficult for European military forces to fill their capability gaps in time, since the EU’s defence industries are not able to cater to all of Europe’s equipment needs.8 The more units of goods with high development costs that are produced, the lower the average cost of each unit. To achieve such ‘economies of scale’ in defence production, European industry has an interest in enlarging its potential customer base through exports. Plus, keeping the European market open and exporting to partner countries (such as democratic, law-abiding NATO members) would also raise the bar for European companies and lead to more competitive products.
In a best-case scenario, the EU would stimulate defence research and development spending from member-states, which would benefit European industries and simultaneously relieve at least some of the pressure on them to find export customers and prioritise their requirements over those of European security.
Second, member-states’ arms export policies need to be reliable and consistent in order to engage in joint capability development. The EU has devised a range of new initiatives to improve its defence capabilities. Among the most high-profile of these new initiatives are the Co-ordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the European Defence Fund and Permanent Structured Co-operation (PESCO). All of these aim to encourage member-states to co-operate on capability development.
The EU envisages that the process will work as follows: the EU institutions together with European governments identify Europe’s capability gaps and opportunities for joint capability development through CARD; they agree on a list of military equipment that is needed in Europe (the so-called Capability Development Plan); a group of PESCO members decides to develop an item together; and that group gets co-funding from the European Commission via the defence fund. But so far, the EU has not yet developed a plan about what to do when these member-states cannot agree on arms export rules.
Germany’s decision in the autumn of 2018 to suspend all arms exports to Saudi Arabia indicated just how much of an obstacle arms export policy could become to joint capability development. In 2018, Berlin put a halt to the sale of already assembled items, such as patrol boats, as well as German-produced components used by other companies across Europe. The freeze held up the delivery of Meteor air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia.9 The missiles are produced by the European company MBDA (jointly owned by Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo), but the propulsion system and warheads are built in Germany. German components are also needed to maintain European products after delivery, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon planes, produced jointly by the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. Germany’s allies criticised the unpredictability of Berlin’s arms export policy and warned that European defence companies would resort to producing ‘German-free’ goods in the future.10
Member-states will only come together to create new military equipment, like the next European fighter jet, if they can rely upon one another for the supply of components. Without a common arms export policy, jointly-produced systems will always be vulnerable to one of the partners introducing export controls on one or more of the potential purchasers.
How does the EU export and control arms?
The EU’s arms export regime is fragmented, and based on three layers of law: international, EU and national. The regime is made up of several legislative instruments, which are monitored by different EU institutions. And while the EU sets out basic tenets for arms exports, licensing and regulation is determined at the national level, resulting in 28 national licensing systems and sets of rules.
Although arms exports ultimately remain a matter of national competence, EU member-states have agreed to “high common standards” and “convergence” in managing arms transfers.11 There are two parts to this commitment. First, the European Council adopted the Common Position on Arms Export Controls in 2008, which defines common rules governing the control of exports of military technology and equipment. Second, all member-states are party to the international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which establishes the “highest possible common international standards” for the global arms trade. The ATT was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2013 and entered into force in the EU in 2014. Both the ATT and the Common Position are legally binding, and regulate exports of conventional weapons.
The Common Position sets out eight criteria against which member-states must test export licences, including respect for human rights and international humanitarian law in the destination country.
However, the regulation of arms exports is a national competence in the EU. Article 346 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union affirms that a member-state can take measures in relation to arms trade and production to protect its security interests, and that the EU treaties do not apply to such measures. Article 346 cannot in principle be invoked for economic reasons such as to protect national industries and jobs. But the reality has often been different.12
The EU encourages convergence between member-states’ export policies through information-sharing on export licences. National export authorities attend monthly meetings of the Council’s Working Group on Conventional Arms Exports, known as COARM, where they consult one another and exchange sensitive information on licences they have denied. COARM uses the EU’s electronic communication network to allow member-states to notify one another in real time when an export licence has been turned down (around five to 10 times per day).13 The denial notifications are collated in a central EU database. Once a year, member-states submit their export data, which is compiled into a report. COARM has also developed a user’s guide which outlines best practices for applying the eight licensing criteria to arms exports.
If it were properly implemented, the Common Position would be one of the one of the strongest international arms export frameworks in the world. However, member-states often fall far short of their obligations under the Common Position and fail to apply its criteria to their export decisions. France has refused to incorporate the eight criteria into its domestic legislation.14
Countries often fall short of their obligations under the Common Position and fail to properly apply its criteria to their exports.
The Common Position says licences should be granted on a case-by-case basis, so national authorities assess whether a specific weapon export violates the eight criteria. But testing exports in isolation makes it easier for authorities to avoid acknowledging the broader context and cumulative effect of arms exports. Thus a European country may decide to export a weapon to a repressive regime that is committing abuses of international human rights or humanitarian law if the authorities judge that those weapons will not be directly used to commit those abuses. For instance, the UK government has continued to arm Saudi Arabia, even after the kingdom became engaged in a bloody conflict in Yemen in 2015, and despite evidence from the UN that the Saudi-led coalition was violating international humanitarian and human rights law.15 The then international trade secretary, Liam Fox, defended the government’s decision to export to the Saudis, arguing that it is the government’s job to conduct “a prospective and predictive exercise as to whether there is a clear risk that exports might be used in the commission of a serious violation of IHL in the future”.16 Decisions about large-scale arms exports are taken at the highest political level, meaning that judgements will be political rather than guided by the details of the Common Position.
The Common Position is also poorly enforced. Although it is legally binding, member-states are free to decide how they implement it, and there is no formal mechanism to sanction non-compliance. National governments could be taken to court if their export decisions violate the Common Position. The European Council’s legal service says that national courts can use the Position as a legal basis for prosecution, though this rarely happens. But with few exceptions, the Treaty on European Union (TEU, 2009) gives the European Court of Justice (ECJ) no powers in relation to common foreign and security policy. As a result, export authorities can be confident that there will be no material consequences for a loose interpretation of the Position.
Instead of relying on EU oversight, member-states tend to draw up memorandums of understanding ahead of joint capability projects, designed to prevent any one country from blocking sales of arms that other partners want to make. But even these agreements do not legally bind their signatories – Germany broke some of them in 2018, for example.17 In spite of the EU’s Common Position, each country currently maintains the final say over where its arms are exported to, and enjoys quite a bit of flexibility in that decision.
Sales of military goods within the EU are regulated by the Intra-Community Transfers Directive (2009). Its aim was to facilitate trade of conventional military goods within the EU. Member-states have implemented the directive via their national laws, but it has had limited success. As it stands, few defence companies have taken the opportunity to become certified, as it is not considered worth the cost and effort.18
Goods that have both a military and a civilian application – dual-use products – do not fall under the Common Position. Controlling the trade of these items is an EU competence, so they are regulated as part of the Union’s common commercial policy under Council Regulation 428/2009 (Dual-Use Regulation). As a result, and unlike conventional arms, dual-use items fall under the ECJ’s jurisdiction. However, cases involving these products tend to come before national courts – no such case has ever been tried at the ECJ. The EU is the only region in the world with a shared legal basis for controls on dual-use exports.19
At its most stringent, arms export control can take the form of an arms embargo on specific states or non-state actors. The Union has imposed arms embargoes on 38 such actors since 1996. The legal basis is set out in the TEU which states that sanctions (‘restrictive measures’) can be issued to pursue common foreign and security policy goals, such as the advancement of democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The EU can also impose sanctions under a UN Security Council mandate.
The Council and the European External Action Service (EEAS) are the two key institutions in the arms embargo process. The EU’s High Representative can initiate an embargo. The Council then adopts a decision (with the advice of the EEAS), which must be unanimous.
If the embargo is part of a broader sanctions package that involves economic or financial measures, then the High Representative (and in the case of dual-use items, the European Commission) drafts an implementing regulation, and the Council adopts the regulation by qualified majority voting. The decision is legally binding on member-states, which must then implement the embargo via national legislation.
The Union’s sanctions packages (other than those that are mixed with UN measures), including arms embargoes, are adopted for six months or a year. Towards the end of the period, the Council must reach consensus in order to prolong or adapt the embargo. There are very few exceptions, for instance, the Iran nuclear deal which sets specific expiry deadlines. The Council must also reach consensus in order to terminate sanctions before the specified end date.
Like the Common Position, arms embargoes are often poorly implemented and enforced in EU member-states. The EU’s foreign and security policy sanctions committee monitors EU sanctions but has little control over how they are implemented by member-states.
The following three cases – Saudi Arabia, Syria and Venezuela – show how co-ordination at the EU level, or lack of it, has played out in previous arms exports decisions.
Saudi Arabia
In 2015, the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman launched a military intervention in Yemen. The Houthis, a Shiite tribal group, had taken control of the country’s capital, Sana’a, and forced the resignation of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and his government – which had been backed by the Saudis. Saudi Arabia presented the incursion as necessary to control Iranian influence on the Arabian Peninsula, exaggerating the extent of Iranian support for the Houthis.20 The Saudis formed a coalition of nine other Sunni Arab countries: the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, Morocco and Senegal.21 The coalition wants to restore the Hadi government and provides financial and military support to the Yemeni army and proxy armed groups. The US, UK and France provide the coalition with arms, military equipment and training. The conflict has left 22 million people, three-quarters of all Yemenis, in need of humanitarian aid and protection.22
Member-states exporting arms to Saudi Arabia could themselves be in breach of international humanitarian law.
The Arms Trade Treaty, the Common Position and national legal frameworks all predicate arms exports upon respect for international humanitarian law, which governs armed conflicts, in the destination country. EU member-states have an obligation to take all possible steps to safeguard respect of international humanitarian law by the warring parties in Yemen.23 But UN experts have concluded that the governments of Yemen, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are responsible for numerous violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.24 Member-states exporting arms to Saudi Arabia, in the knowledge that the equipment could be used to violate international humanitarian law, could themselves be in breach of international humanitarian law.25 The European Parliament has stated that member-states that supply weapons to the Saudi-led coalition are “in violation” of the Common Position and called for an embargo, though this opinion has no legal weight.26
France and the UK were the second and third largest suppliers of arms to the Saudis from 2013-17, after the US. The French and British governments have insisted that arms exports to the coalition are lawful and strategically important. The logic for supporting the Saudi-led coalition is the need to counter-balance Iranian efforts to dominate the region. But given Saudi Arabia’s tilt towards an erratic, aggressive foreign policy, the usefulness of the Saudis as a regional partner is questionable.27 The UK Court of Appeal recently ruled that the British government’s decision-making process for export licences for billions of pounds’ worth of arms to Saudi Arabia had been unlawful. In its judgment, the court said the British government failed to assess whether the Saudi-led coalition had violated international humanitarian law during the Yemen conflict. For now, the British government cannot grant new licences to Saudi Arabia until it has re-evaluated its existing export licences in line with the law.28 The UK government will appeal the decision.
The UK and France believe Saudi Arabia is an important strategic partner in the region, and fear the lost business if they stop arms exports to the kingdom. But other member-states have imposed their own national arms embargoes on the kingdom in response to the situation in Yemen and to the murder of Khashoggi. Finland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Wallonia region in Belgium and the Netherlands have stopped licensing exports. Sweden refused to renew its military co-operation with Saudi Arabia in 2015, and the Flemish parliament in Belgium rejected a request for military supplies in 2016.
Alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and supporting European interests in the region requires a co-ordinated approach, however. The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen poses a serious danger to the stability of the region, and thus to European interests there. The Yemen crisis could lead to more migration from the Middle East towards the EU. The current power vacuum in Yemen and the dire humanitarian situation there have bred instability, allowing extremist organisations like al-Qaeda to flourish. The EU is worried that conflict might spill over to other countries, after Europe has invested heavily in promoting stability and security in Egypt, Iran, Syria, the Gulf of Aden, and
the Horn of Africa. Europe’s divergent arms exports policies are thus undermining the continent’s security and credibility.
Syria
Much like the Yemen conflict, the Syrian civil war has exposed Europe’s lack of common foreign policy, as exemplified by diverging arms export policies.
Syria descended into civil war after President Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in April 2011. The EU responded by imposing sanctions on Syria, including an embargo on the sale of arms and military equipment to all actors (other than humanitarian workers). The embargo was fleshed out by Council regulations in 2012, which banned specific items such as telecoms interception equipment.
Although lifting the embargo did not significantly alter the situation on the ground, it revealed Europe’s disunity.
In September 2012, when Assad looked dangerously close to victory, the UK and France began to agitate for lifting the embargo. The UK and France wanted to arm the Syrian rebels, whom they saw as the moderate opposition to Assad. They argued that strengthening the Syrian rebels would protect civilians, ‘level the playing field’ and help facilitate a diplomatic solution by forcing Assad to the negotiating table.29 Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden strongly opposed lifting the embargo, arguing that this could exacerbate the conflict and that weapons could be diverted to al-Qaeda.
In May 2013, following a 13-hour meeting of European foreign ministers, the EU lifted the arms embargo for the Syrian rebels. The 28 foreign ministers failed to reach consensus on renewing the arms embargo. Instead, they agreed a weaker political commitment not to supply arms, and then High Representative Catherine Ashton attempted to gloss over the disunity. “Member-states may take different decisions – that doesn’t mean we’ve lost the capacity to have a common foreign policy”, she said. The Austrian vice chancellor and foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, lamented: “It is regrettable that we have found no common position”. The Council promised to review its position before August 2013. It did not.
In June 2013, a UN report detailed war crimes and abuses by Syrian opposition forces (though to a lesser extent than by government forces and affiliated militia). The report urged the international community to restrict arms transfers “given the clear risk that arms will be used to commit serious violations of international human rights or international law”.30
In 2014, Germany, the UK and Finland issued 16 licences for “vehicles”, “chemical, biological or radioactive agents” and “armoured or protective equipment”, worth €1.5 million – some of which were destined for UN-mandated or other international missions.31 This was just a slight increase from the 10 licences the years before.32 In the end, there was no reporting of European member-states directly supplying the rebels – although it later emerged that European weapons had inadvertently reached armed rebel-groups. Lifting the embargo did not significantly alter the situation on the ground, though it did reveal Europe’s disunity.
Venezuela
Since Venezuela descended into crisis in 2010, Europe has struggled to speak with one voice. The EU’s High Representative for foreign and security policy Federica Mogherini has often been limited to making declarations when member-states could not reach a consensus on sanctions or who to designate as the country’s legitimate government.
After months of anti-government protests, President Nicolás Maduro was re-elected in a rigged election in the autumn of 2017. The EU’s member-states spent months arguing over how to manage the unfolding crisis, with disputes over the EU’s right to intervene and encourage a change of regime. The EU was unable to reach a unanimous decision on sanctions, in part because Greece and the populist Five Star Movement within Italy’s coalition argued that sanctions interfered in Venezuela’s sovereign affairs. Only in November 2017 did the EU adopt sanctions on Venezuela and call for free and fair elections. The restrictive measures included asset freezes and travel bans on individuals, as well as an arms embargo, including on equipment that could be used for internal repression or monitoring. In an official communication, the Commission later argued that this delayed decision followed “a further substantial deterioration of the situation on the ground”.33
Member-states continue to prioritise short-term financial and industrial concerns above common EU foreign and security objectives.
Member-states’ arms policies towards Venezuela have often been guided by economic and industrial interests, rather than by concern for regional stability. However, most of Venezuela’s military equipment is procured from Russia and China (82 per cent), with EU member-states playing a minor role (11 per cent, most of which came from Spain, the Netherlands, France and Germany).34
Before the embargo, European member-states sold arms to Venezuela despite rising regional tensions. In 2008 the Chávez regime threatened to send tanks, troops and Russian combat aircraft across the Colombian border – threatening regional stability and even European territory like the (then) Netherlands Antilles. That did not stop EU countries approving seven more arms export licences to Venezuela in 2009 than the previous year. That included a huge contract for almost a billion euros worth of warships from Spain – Madrid’s largest ever arms contract at the time and licences for fire control systems and naval equipment worth €28.3 million from France.35 The risks of Europe providing such equipment were brought into focus years later in December 2018, when one of the Spanish frigates sold to Venezuela intercepted a Norwegian oil exploration vessel (which was undertaking a survey on behalf of the US company ExxonMobil) off the shore of Guyana and forced it to flee the area, in an attempt by Venezuela to claim its sovereignty over contested waters.36
As late as the first quarter of 2018, the Spanish government authorised the sale of €20 million worth of tank parts to Maduro’s government – even though the embargo had started in November 2017. The authorisation was technically permissible because the embargo includes an exemption for contracts that were already concluded. The Spanish government said the contract for the sale had been signed before the embargo, and that it was just the political approval that came later. But the deal would have been halted without this political approval. The latest Spanish sale shows that member-states continue to prioritise short-term financial and industrial concerns rather than common EU foreign and security objectives – in spite of the clear risks involved.
Is a greater role for the EU in regulating arms exports possible?
Europe needs more co-ordination when it comes to arms exports. Divergent arms export policies undermine Europe’s common foreign and security policy goals. Sanctions taken at the individual country level are ineffective. When Europeans act in unison, the impact of their foreign policy is multiplied, especially when their arms export policies are integrated into broader EU policies towards particular regions or conflicts.
There are radical, and for now unrealistic, ways of bringing about a common European arms export policy. For example, to ensure that member-states adhere to the Common Position, the EU would have to introduce a mechanism to hold governments accountable for breaking the rules. Or if member-states agreed to give up some national decision-making authority over arms exports, the EU could establish a supervisory body controlled by the Commission or the High Representative to report violations of the Common Position by member-states. The Commission could refer member-states that refused to follow the rules to the ECJ.37 Such a new body would require a change to the EU fundamental treaties and therefore unanimity among EU member-states, however.
At present, there is little appetite among member-states (including Germany) to give up decision-making power in this field. Anne-Marie Descôtes, the French ambassador to Germany, recently dismissed the idea of Europeanising arms exports as a cop-out and an attempt to pass responsibility to European institutions.38 She argued that it would be an unparalleled transfer of sovereignty and an unacceptable violation of Article 346. Her reading of the mood in Europe is accurate. But the EU’s plans to build a ‘defence union’ could open a window of opportunity for ‘more EU’ in arms export policy.
At present, there is little appetite among member-states to give up decision-making power on arms exports.
The EU’s recent defence initiatives represent a qualitative shift in the way the EU gets involved in defence. For years the European Commission has kept out of the defence realm, long considered a bastion of national sovereignty. Now, it has slowly begun to carve out a role for the EU in order to address some of the underlying problems that beset European defence technology and industry.
The proposed introduction of the European Defence Fund into the next EU budget is a step towards a greater EU role in capability development. The fund’s regulation states that Commission funding should have no effect on exports of arms developed with the help of EU money – the result of rigorous opposition from member-states, in particular from France, to any EU authority over exports.39 The regulation also stipulates that EU money cannot be used to fund small and light weapons that are meant mainly for export purposes, when no member-state has expressed a requirement for the weapon. And the regulation says member-states have to notify the Commission of any export of EU-funded kit to a non-EEA country;40 and, if that export “contravenes the security and defence interests of the Union and its member-states”, the money provided under the fund must be reimbursed. The security and defence interests of the Union are not laid down anywhere in a binding manner. But in the future, the Commission could potentially refer back to the regulation to expand its involvement in arms export policy.
The European Parliament will also want to become more involved in the EU’s defence planning and capability development process, and to have greater oversight of the defence fund. When the fund was first put to a vote in April 2019, 328 EU parliamentarians voted in favour of it and 231 voted against.41 In addition to those who opposed a greater EU defence role on principle, MEPs who opposed the fund questioned in particular the defence industry’s involvement in the drafting of the Commission’s proposal, as well as the Commission’s plans to spend EU money on disruptive technologies – potentially including artificial intelligence, robotics and unmanned systems – which some MEPs consider problematic from an ethical perspective. The Parliament currently has very limited control over the EU’s defence efforts, but now that the EU budget is being used for capability development, this could change in the future.
The Commission is also using its control over the trade of dual-use goods to expand its influence over arms exports. The institution recently tightened the regulation of cyber-surveillance equipment, which could bolster its ability to add items to the dual-use list, further embedding the Commission in defence matters. The institution emphasises the fact that European defence markets deal with many dual-use goods, thus strengthening its basis for challenging member-states that invoke Article 346.42
There are thus some signs of an increasing role for the EU in defence industrial policy. But treaty reform and an overhaul of Europe’s arms export regime are still a long way off. Plus, some fear that a harmonised policy would necessarily have to settle for a ‘lowest common denominator’ level of restraint, and be less restrictive than those of many member-states currently. And some NGOs and civil society organisations worry that giving greater powers to the Commission, which is less accountable than member-states’ governments, would make the system still less democratically accountable.
Without a functioning common European arms export regime, the EU is unlikely to be able to live up to its full potential in terms of foreign policy. But in the meantime, there are still ways in which the EU could maximise the impact of export and embargo decisions, strengthen the European defence market, and ensure that arms exports are in line with European values and interests.
Recommendations
1. Improve the Common Position
A review of the Common Position began in 2018, and is ongoing in COARM. Reviewers are considering how to improve the wording of the Position; possible changes to the users’ guide, including an e-licensing system for military goods; and adapting the annual report into a publicly available online database to improve transparency. Any change to the Common Position will require unanimity.43
COARM should take seriously the gaps and failings of the current arms export regime.
COARM should take seriously the gaps and failings of the current arms export regime. Reviewers should clarify some terms – on which the recent UK Court of Appeal case turned – such as ‘clear risk’, ‘might [be used]’ and ‘serious violations’. COARM could also consider shifting the emphasis in the Common Position away from the current narrow, functional approach, where the licensing authority tests whether that particular weapon system could be used to violate international human rights or humanitarian law, towards a more holistic view of the situation in the destination country. The Common Position should also make it explicit that existing licences can be suspended or revoked if the export authority so decides. This would confirm that compliance with international law takes precedence over reliable supply, and might avoid decisions like that of the Spanish government to authorise the sale of tank parts to the Maduro government in 2018.
The Common Position sets out member-states’ obligations to report annually on the export licences they have issued. But many member-states, including France, the UK and Germany, still fail to submit full reports on time. The EU should establish strict reporting deadlines and standardise the format of these reports – some member-states compile their statistics differently, and some use national classifications of military equipment rather than the EU Military List. Reporting obligations should include actual deliveries, which would give a more complete picture than just reporting export licences – this could for instance signal that a regional balance might be disturbed by a sudden influx of weapons. If one member-state feels that another has authorised an export in violation of the Common Position criteria, it could ask the exporting state to share its risk assessment in confidential channels, showing how its exports fit with the criteria.
Some countries struggle to implement even the current reporting obligations, due to a lack of resources or know-how. COARM should organise peer review meetings where governments can exchange best practices on how to gather data from industry.44 The peer review process could also be broadened, so that member-states could discuss how they implement the Common Position at the national level: whether it has been transposed into national legislation, and what guidance is available for licensing authorities.
2. Implement stronger end-use controls at the EU level
Licences for the export of military equipment should only be issued once the seller knows who will use the weapons in the destination country and what for. But any arms export regime runs the risk of diversion, where weapons can, and do, end up in the wrong hands. This is particularly true for small arms, which cause the largest share of human casualties in internal and cross border conflicts; frequently contribute to their violent escalation; and, in the hands of criminal groups, can impede economic and social development.45
A 2017 report found that more than 30 per cent of arms used by IS fighters in Syria and Iraq came from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Germany.46 In spite of clear diversion risks, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania supplied weapons to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Turkey. EU countries licensed €1.2 billion worth of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank missiles and heavy machine guns between 2012 and 2016.47 This was in the face of evidence suggesting that the weapons could end up with armed rebels and Islamist groups operating in Syria and Iraq, including those responsible for human rights abuses, like Ansar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra (affiliated with Al-Qaeda), and the so-called Islamic State. Given that military components manufactured in Central and Eastern Europe were not compatible with equipment already in service with Saudi forces, it should have been even clearer that there was a risk of diversion. These weapons sales may have violated national, EU and international law.48
European countries have a responsibility to ensure none of their arms end up in the wrong hands. To accomplish that, governments can employ end-use controls, where the recipients have to agree not to re-export the weapons or to pass the weapons on to another user within the country without approval by the seller; and to destroy the weapons that are being replaced by the imported arms (rather than, for example, selling them to a third party).
European countries have a responsibility to ensure that none of their arms end up in the wrong hands.
Experience shows, however, that compliance with these rules is poor. For example, German G36 assault rifles exported to the Mexican government in 2013 subsequently found their way to Mexican police in states at high risk of violence and not covered by the export licence. The rifles are suspected to have been used in the high profile 2014 kidnapping and apparent murder of 43 students from a college in Iguala in the south of the country. The German arms seller Heckler & Koch has since been fined by a German court.
The German government has taken steps to ensure better compliance with its end-use regulations. For example, Berlin introduced post-shipment controls for small arms and light weapons in 2015, which can involve spot-checks once the arms have been dispatched.49 The first on-the-spot controls to verify the final destination of small arms were carried out in recipient countries India and the United Arab Emirates in 2017.50 A few European countries, including Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, have similar regulations or plans to introduce them.51 Others, like the UK, instead rely on their diplomatic connections and resources in the buyer country to prevent exported weapons ending up in the wrong hands.
The EU could explicitly encourage and support member-states to implement their own post-shipment controls. End-use controls are difficult to implement: they require significant financial, legal and human resources, as well as political leverage in the buying country. EU resources, such as expert teams made up of Commission or EEAS staff, dispatched to EU delegations in the buying country, could be employed to help with controls. This would have to be pre-negotiated and included in the contract signed by the purchaser. And it would require the EU to find solutions for confidentiality issues that arise with sharing export information with EU staff, as well as investment in staff with the expertise to identify weapons. But it could become a good instrument to keep purchasing countries honest and to discourage exporters from proceeding with sales where there is clear risk of diversion.
3. Tighten and revise dual-use regulations at the EU and national level
The Dual-Use Regulation (2009) is also under review. During the Arab Spring in 2010-2012, European and American companies exported cyber-surveillance technology to repressive Arab governments. That prompted the European Parliament to call for tighter controls on surveillance technology, which is classified as dual-use. In 2016 the European Commission proposed strengthening the Dual-Use Regulation to include cyber-surveillance technology, and the European Parliament argued for the inclusion of human rights considerations, calling on the Commission to add clear criteria and definitions to the regulation that would protect the right to privacy, data protection and freedom of assembly. The Commission proposal included an EU-specific list of dual-use items52 and the ‘catch-all’ control, which would mean the export of any item could be denied if it might be used to violate human rights.
After a lengthy review process, the Council Working Party on Dual-Use Goods removed the references to cyber-surveillance technology and human rights. This was due to criticism from industry, which was unhappy with the ‘catch-all’ idea, which would place legal liability on defence companies. Some member-states were also concerned that an EU-specific list would affect competitiveness, as the Union would be going beyond internationally accepted standards.53 The Council must now negotiate an agreed text with the European Parliament. Whether or not the new European Parliament will accept this diluted version of the recast regulation remains to be seen.
The EU should establish clear criteria and guidelines for assessing whether to export dual-use goods. As it stands, there is too little clarity on important terms at the EU level, leading national authorities to apply the regulation inconsistently. The EU could also encourage an information exchange between member-states, where authorities can share how they implement the regulation – from how the authority understands specific terms, to the penalties applied, to how licences are issued.54
The EU should strengthen the reporting procedure, requiring member-states to report licence denials, and the number and type of licences that have been approved. Member-states should be obliged to make this information public. To relieve the burden on member-states, authorities could just publish data on exports of cyber-surveillance technology, rather than on all dual-use export items.55
4. Expand inter-governmental agreements
Even at the inter-governmental level, the lack of agreement on arms export policy prevents collaboration. Pending an EU-wide agreement, a practical way to increase harmonisation of EU arms exports could lie in agreements between small groups of member-states.
A way to increase harmonisation of EU arms exports could lie in agreements between small groups of member-states.
In 2000, six EU member-states – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK – signed the Farnborough Framework Agreement, to improve consultation and co-operation on defence. The framework discusses simplifying and harmonising the signatories’ export licensing procedures, and even developing common instruments.
It is an EU adage that nothing can happen without compromise between France and Germany, and that such a compromise can then be applied to the rest of the EU. In 2019, France and Germany signed the Aachen Treaty, a follow-up to the 1963 Elysée Treaty, pledging deeper co-operation between the two countries. They promised to develop “a common approach to arms exports with regard to joint projects”.
In the months since the treaty was signed, Paris and Berlin have also signed a supplementary agreement specifically on the subject of arms exports.56 They agreed that for jointly developed systems – such as the planned European fighter jet – they would inform each other, well in advance of formal negotiations, of any opportunity for sales to third countries. They promised not to oppose the other’s exports “except on an exceptional basis, where their direct interests or national security are compromised”, which again leaves room for each country to fall back on national sovereignty concerns. If there is disagreement over an export, France and Germany plan to hold “high-level talks” where the state opposing the export does “everything possible” to propose alternative solutions. They also agreed on provisions to prevent whole European production lines being stalled because of a national freeze on the export of components. Components produced by one country and incorporated into weapons systems by another will be subject to the de minimis principle: so long as the contribution of that component to the overall system remains below a percentage jointly determined beforehand, the country producing the component guarantees authorisation of the export.
Arms exports provisions agreed by the two frontrunners could be extended to include other countries’ arms exports, or member-states could sign similar agreements between themselves. This government-led process could gradually develop to make arms export rules more predictable throughout the EU. However, to strengthen rather than erode EU foreign policy objectives, these agreements would have to go much further than the one proposed by Berlin and Paris, and include a binding commitment to abide by the EU’s export criteria.
The latest bilateral agreement between Paris and Berlin is very similar to the Debré-Schmidt agreements, signed in 1971 by the two countries’ then defence ministers, which successfully governed exports of jointly developed arms until Germany decided to ban exports to Saudi Arabia. This indicates that the issue is not necessarily the lack of agreements, but rather the lack of a common view of the threat environment.
Conclusion
Europe’s diverging export policies are harming the EU’s interests and credibility. Without stronger co-ordination at the EU level, Europe’s ability to protect its security is diminished, and the Union runs the risk of its member-states violating international law and being complicit in human rights abuses and other atrocities.
A stronger, unified arms export policy is also vital for EU ambitions to develop a European defence industry. Joint European capability projects will perpetually stumble when governments run into disagreements on export rules.
However, before a common arms policy can be agreed, EU member-states must first reach a shared analysis of any given conflict and establish what the EU’s interests are. This often proves difficult. For instance, EU member-states have different views on whether supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia will help stabilise the Gulf region, and how exports might affect European security. At the heart of the issue lies a lack of consensus on threat perception and strategic assessment. And many member-states think in terms of national efforts to protect national security, rather than considering that their national security is rarely distinct from wider EU and European security. Lucrative arms contracts for national defence industries and preserving or creating domestic jobs also generate pressure to interpret the Common Position liberally.
A common and enforceable EU arms export regime, including a sanctions mechanism and supervisory arms control body, should be the goal. Conversations with EU officials and industry figures make it abundantly clear that this is a long way off. But the development of EU defence initiatives and the increasing role of the Commission in defence policy suggest the first tentative steps towards this end may be taking place.
Even if an overhaul were legally possible without consensus, it would be unwise. EU member-states should attempt to reach a shared view on the security context of arms exports, improve the wording of the Common Position and agree on the format of reporting by member-states, tighten dual-use regulation and end-use controls, and reach inter-governmental export agreements. Europe’s security will benefit if the EU can keep moving towards convergence on arms export policy.
1: The combined arms exports of European Union member-states accounted for 27 per cent of global arms exports between 2014-18.
2: Goods that have both a military and a civilian application are known as dual-use.
3: “It’s not as easy as saying cut off arms sales. If we don’t … sell them munitions that are precision-targeted … with our rigour and standards … the situation could get a whole lot worse”, British MP Johnny Mercer argued in defence of continued supply of arms to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, ‘Peston’s Politics’, ITV, October 25th 2018.
4: Rolf Mützenich, deputy head of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the German Bundestag, ‘German ban on arms exports to Saudis spurs pushback’, Spiegel Online, March 6th 2019.
5: Michael Brzoska, ‘Measuring the effectiveness of arms embargoes’, Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 2008; Clara Portela, ‘The EU’s use of ‘targeted’ sanctions: Evaluating effectiveness’, CEPS, March 2014.
6: German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Industry, ‘Report by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany on its policy on exports of conventional military equipment in 2016’, June 2017.
7: 90 per cent of France’s arms exports and 73 per cent of Germany’s went to non-EU buyers between 2014 and 2018, and 89 per cent of UK arms exports went outside Europe in 2017. France and Germany data from Pieter Wezeman and others, ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers’, SIPRI, 2018; UK data from UK Government, ‘UK defence and security export statistics for 2017’, March 14th 2019.
8: Douglas Barrie and others, ‘Protecting Europe: meeting the EU’s military level of ambition in the context of Brexit’, IISS and DGAP, November 2018.
9: Matthias Gebauer and Christoph Schult, ‘Britain accuses Berlin of lacking loyalty to allies’, Der Spiegel, February 19th 2019.
10: Anne-Marie Descôtes, ‘Working Paper on Security Policy No. 7/2019: From “German-free” to mutual trust’, German Federal Academy for Security Policy, March 26th 2019.
11: Council Common Position 2008/944/CFSP of 8 December 2008.
12: Sophia Besch, ‘Security of supply in EU defence: Friends in need?’, CER insight, August 17th 2016.
13: Interview with COARM official. 14: National Assembly, ‘Ordinary Session of 2010-2011’, 13th Legislature, 161st meeting, April 12th 2011.
15: UN Human Rights Council, ‘Situation of human rights in Yemen, including violations and abuses since September 2014’, August 17th 2018. The findings are still subject to a determination by an independent and competent court.
16: House of Commons Hansard, ‘Export licences: High Court judgment’, volume 662, June 20th 2019.
17: Giovanni de Briganti, ‘Dispute over arms exports: France threatens Germany with exit from fighter jet project’, Defense-Aerospace.com, October 2018.
18: European Commission, ‘Evaluation of Directive 2009/43/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 May 2009 simplifying terms and conditions of transfers of defence-related products within the Community’, November 2016.
19: Interview with Ian Stewart, Senior Research Associate at War Studies Department, King’s College London, February 2019.
20: A UN Security Council report from January 2017 concluded there was insufficient evidence to confirm large-scale supply of arms from the Iranian government to the Houthi rebels. See UN Security Council, ‘Letter from the Panel of Experts on Yemen addressed to the President of the Security Council’, S/2017/81, January 31st 2017.
21: Qatar’s membership was suspended in 2017 following the GCC diplomatic crisis. Morocco left the coalition in February 2019 after increasing tension between Rabat and Riyadh.
22: International Organisation for Migration, Yemen report, July 22nd 2018; Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, ‘Press release’, March 20th 2019.
23: See Common Article 1 of the Geneva Convention; Knut Dormann and Jose Serralvo, ‘Common Article 1 to the Geneva Conventions and the obligation to prevent international humanitarian law violations’, International Committee of the Red Cross, September 21st 2015.
24: UN Human Rights Council, ‘Situation of human rights in Yemen, including violations and abuses since September 2014’, August 17th 2018.
25: See Marco Sassòli, ‘State responsibility for violations of international humanitarian law’, International Committee of the Red Cross, June 2002; and International Commission of Jurists, ‘Bearing the brunt of war in Yemen: International law violations and their impact on the civilian population’, July 2018.
26: European Parliament, Resolution on the situation in Yemen, 2018/2853(RSP), October 4th 2018.
27: Beth Oppenheim, ‘You never listen to me: The European-Saudi relationship after Khashoggi’, CER policy brief, May 2nd 2019.
28: Beth Oppenheim, ‘UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been found unlawful’, Independent, June 20th 2019.
29: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘Foreign secretary statement to parliament on Syria’, May 20th 2013.
30: UN Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’, June 4th 2013.
31: Due to a lack of detail in the EU’s annual report, it is not possible to see precisely how many licences. These descriptions are those cited in ‘Brief descriptions of EU Common Military List categories’, ‘Annual report on the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports’, the Official Journal of the European Union, 2014.
32: Annual reports on the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, the Official Journal of the European Union, 2012-2014.
33: European Commission, ‘Communication from the Commission to the European Council, the European Parliament and the Council: A stronger global actor: A more efficient decision-making for EU Common Foreign and Security Policy’, September 12th 2018.
34: The exporting European member-states were Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden, see SIPRI’s trend-indicator value (TIV) tables, 1999-2016.
35: Value of licensed goods, ‘Annual report on the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports’, Official Journal of the European Union, 2009.
36: Martin Arostegui, ‘Critics: Spain’s tank, arms deals with Venezuela prop up Nicolas Maduro’, The Washington Post, January 21st 2019.
37: Bodil Valero, ‘The change we need in EU arms export control’, Friends of Europe, May 14th 2018.
38: Anne-Marie Descôtes, ‘Working Paper on Security Policy No. 7/2019: From “German-free” to mutual trust’, German Federal Academy for Security Policy, March 26th 2019.
39: ‘Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Defence Fund’, COM/2018/0254, June 13th 2018..
40: The European Economic Area includes EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
41: Alexandra Brzozowski, ‘EU lawmakers rubber-stamp European Defence Fund, give up parliamentary veto’, Euractiv, April 18th, 2019.
42: Daniel Fiott, ‘European defence-industrial co-operation: From Keynes to Clausewitz’, Global Affairs, 2015.
43: Anne-Marie Descôtes, ‘Working Paper on Security Policy No. 7/2019: From “German-free” to mutual trust’, German Federal Academy for Security Policy, March 26th 2019.
44: European Parliament Policy Department, ‘The further development of the Common Position 944/2008/CFSP on arms exports control’, July 2018.
45: German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Industry, ‘Report by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany on its policy on exports of conventional military equipment in 2016’, June 2017.
46: ‘Weapons of the Islamic State’, Conflict Armament Research, December 2017.
47: Lawrence Marzouk, Ivan Angelovski and Miranda Patrucic, ‘Making a killing: The €1.2 billion arms pipeline to Middle East’, Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), July 27th 2016.
48: Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International, cited in Lawrence Marzouk and others, OCCRP, July 27th 2016.
49: German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Industry, ‘A restrictive, responsible policy on the export of military equipment’, accessed April 17th 2019.
50: German Federal Ministry for Business and Energy, ‘Short question by MPs Sevim Dagdelen, Heike Hänsel, Matthias Höhn, and the Die Linke party concerning: “carrying out post-shipment controls on arms exports to third countries”’, September 2018.
51: House of Commons Quadripartite Select Committee, ‘UK arms exports during 2016’, ‘The licencing regime’, July 18th 2018.
52: This list would go beyond the international ‘Wassenaar list’, compiled under the Wassenaar Arrangement (1996), a voluntary multilateral export control regime with 42 participating states. The list is divided into dual-use and conventional items.
53: In January 2018, a working paper of objections to the proposal was put forward by 11 member-states, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain. See Council of the European Union, ‘Working Paper: EU Export Control – Recast of Regulation 428/2009’, WK 1019/2018 INIT, January 29th 2018. In May 2018, a further working paper was put forward by a different, overlapping, group of nine member-states, including the UK. See Council of the European Union, ‘Working Paper: For adoption of an improved EU export control regulation 428/2009’, WK 5755/2018 INIT, May 15th 2018.
54: Mark Bromley and Giovanna Maletta, ‘The Challenge of Software and Technology Transfers to Non-Proliferation Efforts: Implementing and Complying with Export Controls’, SIPRI, April 2018.
55: Mark Bromley, ‘Export controls, human security and cyber-surveillance technology: Examining the proposed changes to the EU dual-use regulation’, SIPRI, December 2017.
56: Thomas Wiegold, ‘German-French arms export plans – veto only in exceptional cases’, Augen Ggeradeaus!, February 22nd 2019.
The Council of the EU is currently struggling over whether to impose an arms embargo on Russia as punishment for its role in destabilising Ukraine. Several governments in the EU, including the UK, have already announced that they are denying arms export licences for Russia and revoking those that have previously been granted.
Also in place is a Council Common Position that governs exports of military technology and equipment. This already obliges EU member states to deny arms export licences if there are concerns about the recipient’s respect for international humanitarian and human rights law or non-proliferation – or if they are involved in internal, regional or international conflict and tensions.
Arms embargoes are a vital part of the EU’s “smart sanctions” toolbox, with 22 currently in force. They have no negative humanitarian impact and are usually deployed to restrict arms flows and change target behaviour, and send political signals. The targets of EU arms embargoes tend not to be significant importers of EU-produced arms.
Russia plans to spend more than $700 billion on military equipment in the decade to 2020, and its domestic arms industry will be the main beneficiary of these plans. However, under former Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov (2007-2012), licensed production agreements were struck with EU arms producers for armoured vehicles, helicopters and small arms, as well as parts and components for Russian systems.
This means Russia’s garguantuan €1.1 billion order for two Mistral amphibious assault ships from France is on a very different scale from other deals. It dwarfs Rheinmetall’s €120m contract to build a military training centre in Mulino, a deal suspended earlier in 2014 in response to the Crimean crisis.
Opening the books
EU member states are among the most open in the world when it comes to providing information on arms exports; they annually report on their deliveries of major conventional weapons to the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. That register reveals that during 2008-2012, most of the EU’s arms exports to Russia were destined for a museum or destruction.
EU member states are also obliged to provide annual data on the value of all arms export licences issued and deliveries made, broken down by destination and categories of military equipment. This data is presented in a publicly-available EU annual report on arms exports.
But while all states provide information on licences issued, major exporters such as Germany and the UK do not provide information on their deliveries.
Here’s what we do know: during 2008-2012, EU member states issued export licences worth €925m for Russia, representing just 0.5% of the total value of all export licences issued. France accounted for more than a third of this value, issuing licenses worth €382.5m during this period and delivering €131m worth of military equipment.
Most EU member states provide information in annual reports that appear before the publication of the EU annual report. For its part, the UK has an online database that provides additional information, including descriptions of the items. In addition, the UK’s active and inquisitive parliamentary Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC), provide oversight of these decisions. They have been closely scrutinising the UK’s exports to Russia of late.
For example, on July 23 2013, the CAEC’s Sir John Stanley asked the UK’s prime minister and foreign minister to confirm whether the UK has suspended all 285 licences issued for exports of military equipment and dual-use items for Russia, in line with a government statement made in the spring.
Embargo could damage EU
Russia is a limited market for complete weapons systems produced in the EU. Since the dismissal of Serdyukov, Vladimir Putin has spoken of greater arms production cooperation among the BRICS, not with the EU. Dmitriy Rogozin, the deputy prime minister, has already made it clear that he regards an EU arms embargo as having a greater impact on France than Russia.
A leaked European Commission sanctions memo indicates that an EU arms embargo might exempt contracts already concluded with Russia – in particular the French Mistral deal. That would mean France could deliver the first Mistral to Russia this year, in accordance with its contractual obligations. That the deal was authorised in the aftermath of Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia showed the depth of EU divisions over Russia.
Allowing France to complete such a vast arms deal at this deeply sensitive time will reinforce the view that EU arms embargoes are tokenistic measures, staged to give the impression of “doing something” – as long as it does not significantly damage the interests of the EU’s largest members.
The West has slapped stringent sanctions on Russia in response to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, believed by the U.S. and others to have been shot down with a Russia-supplied Buk missile system by eastern Ukraine rebels.
While the introduction of financial sanctions will create the most immediate squeeze on Russia, it is the crack-down on the arms trade which has triggered debate. Future imports and exports between the EU and Russia are now banned — but existing contracts, including France’s $1.6 billion Mistral-class warships deal, are allowed to go ahead.
But Russia is one of the few countries in the world that is nearly self-sufficient in its defense production, according to IHS Jane’s expert Guy Anderson. So will the arms embargo have an impact?
Here is a cheat-sheet on Europe’s arms trade with Russia.
How big is the arms trade between Europe and Russia?
European Union countries earned $583 million from weapons exports to Russia in 2013, the bulk of which was part-payment of the Mistral deal, according to analysis from IHS Jane’s.
Russia is, by comparison, the world’s second largest military exporter after the U.S., earning $13.2 billion from arms exports last year. Its biggest customers are India and China, countries which have not joined the sanctions against Russia.
The industry is heavily regulated and EU figures track the bloc’s arms trade by licenses approved. In total, European Union countries granted 922 licenses to sell $259 million worth of weapons to Russia in 2012, according to the latest statistics available.
However, according to Anderson, the licenses — which in the UK, for example, expire after two years — are more an “expression of intent” than indication of likely sales.
The trade with Russia compares to $4.3 billion worth of weapons the EU licensed arms companies to sell to the U.S.
What are the biggest deals?
While Russia is a significant player in the supply of arms, it has also leaned on Europe for some big deals.
The biggest — and now most controversial — is the Mistral contract of 2011, signed by France’s previous government. The warships are powerful vessels equipped with six helicopter landing zones. Each of them can carry up to 16 heavy helicopters and around 500 marines.
The first of the two carriers due to be delivered is now completing sea trials, and 400 Russian troops are currently training on it in the French port of Saint-Nazaire.
David Prater, of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said they were Russia’s first “serious” weapon supplied by Europe.
Russia’s other significant deals include its purchase of two German engines for missile boats in 2001, and four light transport aircraft from the Czech Republic in 2012, according to the SIPRI databases.
Details on the contracts are scarce but the Czech planes were reported to be worth around $3.2 million each. Russia also bought 60 army vehicles, reportedly worth estimated $24 million, from Italy in 2011.
According to the SIPRI, Russia has also agreed to buy at least eight drones from Israel in 2009, worth a reported $50 million.
“Ironically, the loss of Ukraine as a supplier to Russia is far more significant that the loss of Europeans,” Anderson said. “A lot of subcontracted work for Russia’s industrial base took place in Ukraine.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the deals and impact of sanctions.
Why is the Mistral deal so politically hot?
The Mistral warships — which experts say are “very capable weapons of mobile war” — have landed France in a politically awkward spot.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius last week argued the country is contractually obligated to deliver the ships — but his comments were made as European relations with Russia deteriorated.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron declared the deal’s completion “unthinkable” before being slapped back by Fabius, who echoed the phrase in reference to the UK’s involvement in the 2003 Iraq invasion.
The Mistral deal keeps some 1,000 Frenchmen and women employed in a country with a 10% unemployment rate — and reversing it would be costly.
However, French President Francois Hollande has thrown doubt on delivery of the second ship, saying last week it “depends on Russia’s attitude.”
What happens next?
European leaders are trying to hit Russia where it hurts with the latest round of sanctions.
As of Thursday, Russia state-owned banks will be restricted from accessing European capital markets and exports of oil-related equipment and technology to Russia will be slowed or stopped by red tape.
All new contracts for arms imports and exports between the EU and Russia will stop, and there will be a prohibition on exporting goods and technology that can be used for both military and civilian purposes.
But in the short-term, the arms ban is unlikely to have a significant impact on Russia’s military might. “The embargo in itself doesn’t change anything in Russian military capabilities right now,” Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher with SIPRI said.
In the long term, he said, Russia could feel pain from losing access to the latest high-tech defense electronic systems developed in the EU.
Since 2014, the news media and other observers have provided accounts of weapon sourcing to armed formations operating in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. To date, efforts to verify these claims have relied largely on examinations of open-source photos and videos of weapons and ammunition, rather than systematic field-based investigations.
To fill this evidentiary gap, CAR undertook a three-year field investigation of materiel recovered from the self-declared DPR and LPR. This report presents the findings to help shed light on the extent to which these armed formations depend on external supplies.
The evidence confirms that factories based in what is today the Russian Federation produced most of the militias’ ammunition and nearly all their weapons, from assault rifles and precision rifles, grenade launchers, precision-guided munitions, and landmines to anti-tank guided weapons. The findings also indicate that these armed formations field weapons previously captured by Russian forces, such as Polish anti-aircraft missiles seized in Georgia in 2008.
In addition, the militias deploy a fleet of Russian-made drones in Ukraine. Russian forces have used similar drones within the territory of EU member states, such as Lithuania and Poland. Russian entities acquired British, Czech, French, German, Spanish, and US-made components for use in the manufacture of these drones. CAR’s analysis and tracing efforts reveal that independent Russian electronics and component distributors acquired such foreign technology on behalf of sanctioned Russian defence and security entities.
Despite the 2014 EU arms embargo on the Russian Federation, key EU-made technology has thus made its way into Russian military drones. CAR’s investigation indicates that a general lack of clarity regarding the end use or end user of components, as well as opaque licensing requirements for dual-use components, may facilitate the export of EU-made components for the manufacture of Russian military UAVs.
The investigation also exposes the systematic obliteration of primary identifying marks on certain weapons recovered from the armed formations operating in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, such as rocket launchers. This practice hinders traceability by concealing evidence of the precise point of diversion or the country of manufacture. The intentional retention of secondary marks, however, enables users to maintain record-keeping and inventories, in keeping with established military doctrine. The overall approach indicates that the militias operate within a centralised logistics structure.
Most of the components that CAR documented are original and were not taken from other weapons, which may suggest a short chain of custody between the point at which the weapons left a production facility or military inventory and their use by the militias in eastern Ukraine. Since the war began in 2014, military supplies have also been exported from facilities in Luhansk and Donetsk to new Russian customers. This development calls for further investigation.
The rapid development of military drones around the world has raised a natural question time and time again-why is Russia so backward in design and production? In most cases, the main reason for this is the lazy thinking of the military and engineers. However, one of the most important and completely unreported problems lies in a completely different level-the technical level. Today we are going to analyze the real reason why Russia has fallen behind in attacking drones.
The key parts are all imported components
At present, the number of UAVs equipped by the Russian Armed Forces exceeds 1,900, and unmanned aviation services have been established in military districts, federations and formation headquarters. All Russian high-tech weapons are not Russian parts in the complete sense-the main components of its microelectronics and computer chips are produced in the United States and its allies. This is not classified information: for example, in the “Military Courier” publication, the Blava submarine-launched ballistic missile uses the “Alpha” microcircuit produced in Latvia, and in the documentary of the Russian studio today about K-433 In the picture of the submarine, you can see FPGA chips from Atmel and Altera in the United States. Judging from the available data, the situation of Russian drones (and all areas of the general defense industry) is exactly the same-their production possibilities directly depend on the purchase of imported parts abroad.
Russian cosmonaut Fyodor shaped robot in as many as half of the components are imported; Costa ( Bulava ) submarine-launched missile system, and even the presence of foreign (Baltic Sea) components. Undoubtedly, since the Soviet era, Western semiconductors have always been a strategically significant technology that cannot be sold to Russia . Nonetheless, Russia was able to buy a sufficient amount of Western microelectronic products to realize the large-scale modernization of the military. This trend is clearly reflected in the design and production of drones-it is no accident. In 2014, NATO conducted a number of covert operations on Ukrainian and Syrian territories. The U.S. Special Operations Forces, the British Royal Marine Corps Commando and the British Air Force Special Forces formed multiple task forces to secretly obtain samples of Russian high-tech samples—especially UAVs. According to available data, at least 20 military drones of the Russian Armed Forces were captured in 3 to 4 years : 9 in the Syrian Arab Republic and 11 in the eastern part of Ukraine. At least three organizations in the United States have carefully studied the samples, then analyzed the sources of their parts, followed up the Russian technology supply chain, and further suppressed them. It has been found that all projects of Russian drones started with an extremely plain goal, obtaining western components from civilian projects, and then slowly developing into military models. The following information is not a military/state secret and is taken from a British investigation report. Below you can see the list of imported parts for Russian military drones given there.
Outpost drone “Forpost”
The Forpost UAV is actually the Russian version of the Israeli UAV Finder II. Initially, it was assembled from foreign components, but in 2016, Russia set a route for import substitution. In December 2019, Interfax News Agency reported that the Russian drone Forpost-R has completed the test of localized parts and is preparing for the national test.
The Russian Ministry of Defense decided to import drones from Israel after the South Ossetia conflict in 2008. Israel refused to provide Russia with the latest system and only agreed to sell the tactical searcher Mk II and the light Birdeye 400 drone.
The first two tactical drones and ten portable drones were supplied in 2009. Due to the agreement between Russia and Syria on the S-400 missile, further cooperation may be cancelled. Licensed production of Israeli drones in Russia is also under threat. The Russian army is determined to design a self-made drone even without the assistance of Israel. There was no need to make a breakthrough at the time: the contract with Israel was finally tied and localized production began. Later, Israel did impose “drone” sanctions on Russia. In 2014, new deliveries of Israeli drones were banned.
According to the British report, the key components of the outpost drone are: 1. The single-cylinder 55W-3i engine of Germany’s 3W-Modellmotoren Weinhold GmbH. 2. Spartan XC3550 user programmable gate array from Xilinx, USA. 3. Fuel system components from Tillotson, Ireland. 4. GPS antenna from Antcom, USA. 5. The navigation module of the Swiss manufacturer MicroEM. 6. The dynamic measurement unit (DMU02 or DMU10-depending on the year of manufacture of the drone), manufactured by Silicon Sensing Systems, UK. 7. Radio frequency module 9XTend 900 MHz, produced by Digi International of the United States. 8. Network controller iEthernet W5300, produced by South Korea WIZnet company. 9. GNSS receiver NV08C-CSM from NVS Technologies AG, USA.
The United States even obtained the engine of the captured “Forpost” UAV, which turned out to be made in Germany.
Drone “Allen”
The micro drone has a mass of only 2.8kg and is driven by a 300W brushless motor . The flying speed can reach 65km/h～105km/h, and the maximum flying altitude is 3000m. It carries out 60-minute uninterrupted reconnaissance of the predetermined area and pre-programmed. Up to 99 track points. Drone “Allen”: a 1-bit microcontroller from the Swiss manufacturer STMicroelectronics. 2. The main photographic equipment Sony FCB-EX11DP is produced by Sony Corporation of Japan. 3. Auxiliary photographic equipment Olympus Stylus TG-860, produced by a Japanese company.
UAV “Zastava”: 1. Electronic components of Israeli defense companies Elbit Systems and Data Links. 2. Electronic components of American Vweb company. 3. Engine of Hacker Motor Company in Germany. 4. Autopilot AP04M from UAV Navigation in Spain. 5. GPS module of Swiss company u-blox.
UAV “Orlan-10”: 1. GPS locator: The chips are domestically made HC4060 2H7A201 and STC 12LE5A32S2 35i. 2. Starter generator PTN78020 produced by Texas Instruments in the United States. 3. Internal combustion engine with ignition module 8-9V, 500mA, manufactured by SAITO, Japan. 4. The flight controller is assembled on the basis of the STM32F103 QFP100 microcircuit from French and Italian manufacturer STMicroelectronics. The MPXA4115A and MPXV5004DP microcircuits from Freescale Semiconductor (now owned by NXP Semiconductors NV in the Netherlands) are used as pressure sensors. The HMC6352 compass sensor is manufactured by Honeywell. 5. The GPS module is based on the GLONASS/GPS/QZSS LEA-6N receiver of Swiss u-blox company, matched with the Russian MNP-M7 (based on the American ADSP-BF534 chip produced by ADI). 6. The telemetry transmission module is based on the ATxmega256A3 microcontroller of Microchip, Inc., and the transmission range is 902-928 MHz. The RF3110 transmitter is manufactured by Municom, Germany. The receiver DP1205-C915 produced by AnyLink in Germany.
Disassembled Russian drone Orlan-10. Judging from the pictures shown, the assembly of Russian drones is mainly based on civilian components. Perhaps this is the reason why they wear out quickly and have relatively low reliability when they are used regularly, so a large number of Russian-made drones have been captured in Syria and Ukraine, and even in the Baltic countries. Allegedly, due to technical reasons, most of the drones that fell into the hands of NATO experts have crashed .
Does Russia understand the meaning of the concept of attacking drones?
Analyzing the situation of Russian drones, few people have touched on this topic. Russia is most proud of “Orion” because this drone is considered the most suitable equipment for mass production. However, as in the case of Russian drone components, the situation is far from as simple as it seems. First, the Russian military industry has not come close to producing analogues of the American Hellfire missiles or the Turkish MAM series of gliding bombs. After the incidents in Syria, Libya, and Karabakh, the Russian-made attack drones urgently needed a suitable air-launched anti-tank (with a launch container). The difficulty is that the Russian defense industry has nothing to replace cornet missiles with other things, but Russia cannot ignore the growing world attack drone market.
At the 2021 Dubai Air Show in the UAE, Russia showed a model of Orion, including a helicopter ATGM Vikhr-M. What are the two anti-tank missiles on the attack drone in 2021? The weight is too large to launch no more than two. What are the disadvantages of this solution? According to American experience, the more missiles on your drone, the longer it will fly on the battlefield. It can hover in the air for several hours, waiting for new targets. In the case of active hostilities, this is a key factor. In other words, the ridiculous combat load of the Russian Orion UAV does not allow for the organization of comprehensive air support for ground forces. It doesn’t look very optimistic, does it? In addition, it is worth mentioning that another proprietary technology of the Russian defense industry is the installation of unguided bombs on MALE-class drones. Talking about the certain “economics” of this solution, it shows that Russian gun manufacturers have shown a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the concept of attack drones.
What are the main problems of using aerial bombs on attack drones? Due to the low carrying capacity, heavy ammunition cannot be carried, and in the case of light (100-150 kg) operation, in order to obtain acceptable bombing accuracy, the drone will have to work at low altitude and enter any, even the most primitive air defense system. -Taking into account its low speed characteristics and poor maneuverability. Even an exchange of fire with a low-tech enemy can cause losses. The hypothetical opponents (and corresponding potential buyers) that make this aircraft are significantly lower than all competitors in the world arms market. They are actually useless in battle with the regular army (imagine the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict again, but in the battle with Orion, they either carry a precision light bomb or two missiles, and in the conflict There is no advantage.
Summarize
In summary, we can say that Russia’s military drones have not yet realized and understood the true meaning of drone operations, whether they are the essence of the concept, tactics, or attack drones. All current actual developments have fully proved this. a little. Without the development of appropriate high-precision weapon systems, it is impossible for Russia to use drones for strikes, whether for personal use or for export delivery.
When we published the key points of the report “Weapons of War in Ukraine” by the UK-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research, it caught our eye that between 2014 and 2018, the drone manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries supplied a sanctioned Russian defense company with UAV components produced by various European and US manufacturers, thus providing a loophole for sanctions evasion.
To understand whether it is used now, we reached out to military expert Mykhailo Samus, Director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, and found out how exactly Israeli technologies are helping Russia today, when western companies decided that it’s not worth the risk supplying war technologies to Russia, and that, paradoxically, Ukraine is still under an unofficial arms embargo from countries of Western Europe.
Israel’s drone supplies
In August 2014, Israel’s defense ministry ordered all domestic drone manufacturers to stop seeking new contracts in Russia, reportedly due to Russian intervention in Ukraine.
However, according to sources of FlightGlobal, the decision still allowed “follow-ups” to existing contracts, including supplying spare parts and upgrades. It wasn’t until 2016 that Israel fully suspended supplies of its drones and spares to Russia.
So, from Israel’s point of view, two shipments of Israeli drone parts to Russia somewhere between 2014 and 2018 revealed by Conflict Armament Research could have been legal if they took place prior to the 2016 ban.
“The supplies prior to 2016 were actually a crime. And when we talk about the beginning of the war against Ukraine, it was the very period from 2014 to 2016 when not only Israel was making shipments to Russia. There were direct supplies from Italy, Germany, and France, there were deliveries from Israel as well. Their reasoning was that these were contracts signed before 2014, so they had the right to continue that,” Mykhailo Samus commented.
EU supplies to Russia
According to the expert, the most striking example of this behavior was the French contract to supply two Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia, signed in 2011. The framework agreement also included technology transfer by creating a consortium and building the next three ships in Russia using Russian components after 2015, when the second France-build carrier was to be shipped to Russia.
“The memorable Mistral contract was successfully averted, but Ukraine had hard times proving to France that the €2 billion for the contract would be bloody money because they would supply these ships to the country which, at the time, had effectively occupied Crimea and the Donbas, was waging an aggressive war against Ukraine. And back then the only thing to stop France was the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, which clearly states that EU countries have no right to supply weapons, military equipment, and dual-use items to participants in armed conflicts,” Mr. Samus says.
Russia and France settled on compensations to Russia for the canceled Mistral contract in the late summer of 2015. The deal was worth €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion), Russia’s advance payment totaled €893 million. France had to return the prepaid money and repay Moscow’s alleged costs which included training 400 sailors, stripping off the Russian equipment, and shipping it back to Russia. In total, France repaid a sum comparable to the full cost of the deal and later managed to sell the two ships to Egypt.
The symbolic button presented on 6 March 2009 in Geneva by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with the Russian capture meaning “overload” instead of “reset.” Video screenshot via BBC Russian Service. ~
The symbolic button presented on 6 March 2009 in Geneva by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with the Russian capture meaning “overload” instead of “reset.” Video screenshot via BBC Russian Service.
As of 2014, starting from the infamous reset in relations with the US of 2010, Russia obtained and signed a huge number of contracts for the supply of weapons and technology, for dual-use goods from European countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Israel. Mykhailo Samus says these included sensitive technologies, aviation tech, and radio electronics, naval technology, and special forces equipment.
“For instance, Germany managed to build one state-of-the-art major ground training center in Russia, Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall Group did it. They were going to build four of them, one in each military district of Russia, but managed to build only in the Western MD. These contracts were terminated, although Rheinmetall too didn’t immediately cancel them, arguing that all those were signed in 2012,” Mr. Samus says.
The Italian company IVECO had signed a contract to supply or assemble 1,775 LMV armored vehicles renamed “Rys” in Russia on Russian soil, and the company supplied Russia with them up until 2016.
France also transferred Russia military technologies other than Mistral helicopter carriers. For example, an interior photo of a Russian tank reportedly captured in August 2014 near Ukraine’s Ilovaisk had, according to Igor Sutyagin, an expert at the RUSI think-tank, a thermal-imaging fire control system made by French firm Thales.
Mykhailo Samus says that these night-vision devices used to be supplied to Russia for many years and only after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the further ongoing conflict these supplies were cut.
“It’s true that sometime after 2016 these international supplies stopped at some point, but it gets really interesting here, because Russia calls, say, the Forpost UAV Russian, which is actually also an Israeli drone, it’s officially said to be made from all Russian parts,” Mykhailo says.
Russian drone Zastava a.k.a. Israeli BirdEye-400 shot down by Ukrainian border guards near Ukrainian positions 1.5 km deep inside Ukrainian territory in Luhansk Oblast about 25 km away from the warzone on 22 July 2015. Source ~
Russian drone Zastava a.k.a. Israeli BirdEye-400 shot down by Ukrainian border guards near Ukrainian positions 1.5 km deep inside Ukrainian territory in Luhansk Oblast about 25 km away from the warzone on 22 July 2015.
”But the drones shot down by Ukrainian military in the Donbas still comprise Israeli components – the problem is that Israel had managed to build an entire plant in Russia to produce its drones. So, although a drone may have ‘Made in Russia’ written outside and its name is Russian, its components may remain Israeli. And although the Israeli side says the supplies were made before the ban, it is difficult to trace how true this really is. Because it’s difficult to determine whether these components were delivered now, or they were delivered before 2016 and Russia still uses them.”
Plate showing Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) markings and serial numbers in the wreckage of a Russian UAV Forpost a.k.a. Israeli IAI Searcher shot down near Novopetrivske (47.844290, 38.816038), Donetsk Oblast in August 2014.
Plate showing Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) markings and serial numbers in the wreckage of a Russian UAV Forpost a.k.a. Israeli IAI Searcher shot down near Novopetrivske (47.844290, 38.816038), Donetsk Oblast in August 2014. Source
“In fact, Russia cannot substiute its imports by 100%, which is obvious, because how can you import and then produce the same Israeli drone? Even then you can make some new Russian one from local components, electronics, and so on. The fact is that Russia doesn’t have such components: any drone as an aircraft, which is, just like a plane, is a system created specifically, with its design being tested for the interaction of all its systems. If you change something, you need to actually make a new aircraft, as it happens with planes — changing some devices, systems actually requires new tests to see how it would affect the capabilities, capacities, characteristics of this plane or UAV,” Mr. Samus believes.
That is why, the expert says, he has doubts that Israel had fully canceled supplies of drone components to Russia, despite official statements saying otherwise.
No EU supplies now?
As for the EU, after 2016, when there was a lot of pressure on European companies, they mostly stopped supplies, at least there are no direct confirmed military business contacts with Russia for now.
The Russians are trying to replace European components with Chinese ones. Mykhailo says that the main reason for this is the European attitude to sanctions: it makes no sense for European companies to get themselves in trouble by earning only a couple of thousand or tens of thousands of dollars from Russia because the supplies to Russia are indeed prohibited by sanctions.
“That is, in the regime of export control, this is a punishable violation, quite a serious one for a company that deals only with civilian products while its products can be used somewhere as a dual-use product or for military purposes. Especially if used in the conflict zone, it is better not to deal with such supplies to Russia, That’s why, I believe, European companies are trying to avoid that. Yet, as the Siemens turbines in Crimea show, when it comes to big money, they don’t mind it. Nevertheless, penalties and sanctions for the companies supplying the turbines are slightly different than for suppliers of military goods,” Mykhailo Samus says.
Unofficial EU arms embargo on Ukraine
With a number of military supplies to Russia prior to 2014 and some even after the introduction of the EU sanctions, Western-European countries had unofficially banned any military supplies to Ukraine long before the Russo-Ukrainian war and this “embargo” lasts to the present day, Mykhailo Samus states,
There was another issue with Europe, especially prior to 2016 when Ukraine said the EU, “You’ve got interesting things out there: you supply weapons, military equipment and technology to the aggressor country, while Ukraine has been banned from military supplies since 2008 and from any contacts of a military-technical nature. This was then an implicit embargo on Ukraine, as Ukraine supplied arms to Georgia during the Georgian-Russian war. Nothing has changed since then: Europe — I mean Western Europe — does not supply us (Ukraine, – Ed.) with anything of this kind.
Russia took note of Israeli drones having seen them in action in Georgia in 2008
Russia became interested in Israeli drone technologies after it had countered Israeli-made drones operated by Georgia in the days of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war when Russia itself had to resort to sending fighter jets or even bombers to collect intelligence data or adjust artillery fire. In the subsequent years, Russia managed not only to purchase drones of several types in Israel, but Israel also built its drone factory in Russia so that Russia itself started manufacturing licensed Israeli drones.
Israel believed that providing Russia with its drones would gain a lever to dissuade Moscow from supplying the sophisticated S-300 air defense systems to Iran. In 2010, Russia suspended its 2007 contract with Iran, but in 2015 Putin lifted the ban and started shipping S-300 components to Iran.
Ukraine didn’t operate any military UAVs at the time of the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war in the late spring of 2014. However, the country could have developed drone capabilities long before the war if it were not for the reluctance of its political and military leadership of the Yanukovych era, Mykhailo Samus says.
“Israel had managed to supply drones to Ukraine, too, but the military and political leadership simply didn’t want to buy them. I know for sure that around 2007-2008, one set of Birdeye was purchased in Israel, but it seems to have remained unused in storage,” Mykhailo said.
Anyway, in September 2014, only a month after its ban of new drone contracts with Russia, Israel also banned all drone supplies to Ukraine, reportedly for maintaining good relations with Russia.
Sanctions do have an effect on Russia, despite it saying otherwise
The conclusion I can draw from the CAR study for myself is that the Russians are really experiencing huge problems due to the sanctions, huge problems from the fact that they didn’t have enough time before 2014 to obtain a full production cycle of all UAV components, and the same goes for ship technology in the Mistrals, and aviation technology, and so on. They immediately tried to solve it by turning to China, but it turned out that the Chinese components were of poor quality.
According to Mykhailo, this applies not only to drones but also to the ship engines that they tried to replace – the diesel motors that they used to buy in Canada, the United States, Finland. The lack of new quality engines causes “huge problems in the Black Sea Fleet.”
I think that as time goes on, Russia would get more and more sanction-caused problems, that’s why the Russians keep saying that sanctions don’t work, but for some reason, they are constantly trying to get them lifted.
The surveillance drones contained computer chips and components made in the United States and Europe
In early 2017, Ukrainian forces battling Russia-backed separatists shot down a drone conducting surveillance over the eastern flank of Ukraine.
The unmanned aircraft, nearly six feet long with a cone-shaped nose and a shiny gray body, had all the external characteristics of a Russian military drone. When researchers cracked it open, however, they found electronic components manufactured by a half-dozen Western companies.
The engine came from a German company that supplies model-airplane hobbyists.Computer chips for navigation and wireless communication were made by U.S. suppliers. A British company provided a motion-sensing chip. Other parts came from Switzerland and South Korea.
“I was surprised when we looked at it all together to see the variety of different countries that had produced all these components,” said Damien Spleeters, an investigator with the London-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) group, who traveled to Ukraine to dissect several drones. All were loaded with Western electronics.
Without those parts, said Spleeters, who summarized his findings in a report funded by the European Union and Germany, Russia would have found it “much more difficult to produce and operate the drones for sure.”
As tensions mount over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials are considering trade sanctions designed to deprive Russia of foreign-made computer chips and electronics. Spleeters’s investigation shows how profoundly the ban could hurt Russia’s military and why it might be hard to pull off.
Russia is known for its scientists and hackers but makes little of its own electronics or computer hardware, relying largely on imports. Yet blocking the flow of these goods could prove difficult. Some of the drone components that CAR identifiedtraveled to Russia via obscure middlemen and small trading companies whose businesses could be tough to track.
What’s more, the relatively small quantities that Russia’s military is likely to need might allow it to acquire components surreptitiously, said Malcolm Penn, the chief executive of London-based semiconductor research firm Future Horizons.
“If you only want 500 or 1,000, it’s easily doable and very hard to stop,” he said. “All throughout the Cold War, when in theory there were no exports to the Soviet Union, that didn’t stop them from getting things. There are always men with suitcases that go out to the Far East and buy stuff and come back.”
Another big wild card is China, which could thwart any U.S. attempt to choke off chips to Russia. CAR estimated that the drones it examined were built between 2013 and 2016, when Western suppliers were more dominant in the chip industry. China has since become a much bigger manufacturer of electronic components, and is unlikely to fully comply with any attempted blockade, technology experts said.
Russia relies on Asian and Western countries to supply most of its consumer electronics and computer chips, which are the brains that make electronics function. Russian imports of these goods in 2020 exceeded $38 billion, according to United Nations trade data.
The Soviet Union had a variety of small semiconductor factories churning out chips, mostly for military use, according to Penn, who visited some of the facilities in the early 1990s. But the Soviet breakup pushed Russia into a long period of turmoil that thwarted development of technology industries and manufacturing.
“The microelectronics industry was completely decimated in the 1990s,” said Sam Bendett, a Russian-military analyst at the Virginia-based research group CNA. “It was just easier to import these technologies, which were widely available in the global market.”
The Russian and Ukrainian embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. Russia retains some manufacturers that produce chips of older designs, including Mikron, which was founded in Soviet times near Moscow. Enterprises in the country also design chips known by the names Baikal and Elbrus — the latter used by the military — but send many of the designs to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chip foundry, for fabrication.
Russian defense contractors in recent years have claimed to have revived some domestic manufacturing of high-tech military equipment, including drones and their components, Bendett said.
The United Statesand the European Union restrict their exports of defense-related electronics to Russia and have toughened those rules in recent years.Yet Russian networks have found ways around those obstacles. In 2015, several Russian agents were convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, federal charges of using a Texas-based company they set up to illegally export high-tech chips to Russian military and intelligence agencies.
Under the broader blockade that U.S. officials are considering, the United States could compel many countries worldwide to cut their chip exports to Russia by telling them they aren’t allowed to use U.S. technology to make components for Russian buyers. Most chip factories worldwide, including those in China and Taiwan, use U.S. manufacturing tools or software in their production process, analysts said.
The United States could limit the ban to Russia’s military and high-tech sectors or could apply it more broadly, potentially depriving Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, The Washington Post recently reported, citing administration officials.
CAR determined that the drones it investigated were used for reconnaissance missions in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has been fueling a separatist war since 2014.
At the invitation of Ukraine’s security services, Spleeters from CAR flew to Kyiv in late 2018 to dissect the drone that was shot down in 2017. Using a duffel bag stuffed with screwdrivers, Allen wrenches and cameras, Spleeters disassembled and photographed the aircraft, looking for serial numbers and markings that could help identify where the parts came from.
He and his colleagues then contacted the component suppliers to try to trace how the parts wound up in the drone. One motion-sensing chip was manufactured by the British company Silicon Sensing Systems, which makes components for drones, car navigation systems and industrial machinery. The company told CAR that it sold the chip in August 2012 to a Russian civilian electronics distributor, sending it through UPS in a package with 50-odd components, according to the CAR report.
The Russian distributor told Silicon Sensing that the chip was to be used in a drone; it later added that it sold the chip to a Russian entity called ANO PO KSI, which it said purchased such items for educational institutions in Russia, according to the CAR report.
ANO PO KSI, which is a Russian acronym for Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems, was added to a sanctions list by the United States in 2016 for allegedly aiding Russian military intelligence.
On its website, ANO PO KSI describes itself as a nonprofit that makes high-tech products, including document scanners and cameras, for the Russian government and business customers. The organization didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In an email to The Post, Silicon Sensing said it “vigorously” complies “with all export control laws and policies everywhere we do business.” It added, “These components were sold in 2012 to a commercial company that was not on an embargo list at that time. We have ceased doing business with that company and any related entities.”
The drone also contained U.S.-made components designed for navigation and wireless communication. One of the suppliers, Digi International, based in Minnesota, told CAR that it sold the wireless communications component to a U.S.-based distributor in March 2012, but that the distributor was unable to identify the ultimate recipient, according to the CAR report.
Digi International told The Post that it screens all sales to be sure it isn’t supplying any prohibited parties in violation of U.S. export control laws. “We do not know how the product in question ended up in a Russian drone. We do not condone the use of our modules by foreign actors in military use cases,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Maxim Integrated, based in California, told CAR that it manufactured a navigation componentfound in the dronein 2013 and shipped it to its distributors in January 2014. It added that the component “is not designed for use in unmanned aerial vehicles.”
Maxim parent company Analog Devices declined to clarify for The Post what the component is used for. In an emailed statement, the company said it “is committed to full compliance with U.S. laws including U.S. export controls, trade sanctions and regulations.”
Other companies in Switzerland and the United Kingdom told CAR they were unable to track the chain of suppliers that had handled their components. The drone’s engine, a single-cylinder unit with an electronic ignition, traveled a particularly mysterious route, from a small company near Frankfurt, Germany, that makes parts for model airplanes.
The company, 3W Modellmotoren Weinhold, which did not respond to a request for comment, told CAR that it had sent the engine to World Logistic Group, a company based in the Czech Republic, in October 2013.
The Czech company, which ceased operations in 2018, could not be reached for comment. The company was founded in the spa town of Karlovy Vary in 2008 by two residents of Moscow, according to Czech business registration documents identified by CAR and reviewed by The Post.
From 2012 to 2014, a third Moscow-area resident served as a director of the company, according to those documents. CAR researchers found that this person was also a member of an advisory council to the Main Directorate of Public Security for Moscow’s regional government. The directorate was established to “implement state policy in the field of public and economic security,” according to the website of Moscow’s regional government.
According to CAR, similar drone models have been recovered after flying over Syria and Libya, countries where Russian troops or mercenaries have also engaged in military action. Lithuania, a member of NATO, discovered an identical model that crashed on its territory in 2016. That one contained foreign-made components and Russian software, according to CAR and Lithuanian security services.
The case shows that Russia uses drones “for intelligence collection not only in conflict zones but also in peacetime in neighbouring NATO countries,” Lithuanian authorities said in a 2019 document.
The engine got here from a German firm that provides model-airplane hobbyists.Laptop chips for navigation and wi-fi communication had been made by U.S. suppliers. A British firm offered a motion-sensing chip. Different components got here from Switzerland and South Korea.
“I used to be stunned after we checked out all of it collectively to see the number of completely different nations that had produced all these elements,” stated Damien Spleeters, an investigator with the U.Okay.-based Battle Armament Analysis (CAR) group, who traveled to Ukraine to dissect a number of drones. All had been loaded with Western electronics.
With out these components, stated Spleeters, who summarized his findings in a report funded by the European Union and Germany, Russia would have discovered it “far more troublesome to supply and function the drones, for positive.”
As tensions mount over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officers are contemplating commerce sanctions designed to deprive Russia of foreign-made pc chips and electronics. Spleeters’s investigation exhibits how profoundly the ban might damage Russia’s navy — and why it is perhaps laborious to tug off.
Russia is thought for its scientists and hackers however makes little of its personal electronics or pc {hardware}, relying largely on imports. But blocking the stream of those items might show troublesome.
A few of the drone elements that CAR recognizedtraveled to Russia through obscure middlemen and small buying and selling firms whose companies might be robust to trace.
What’s extra, the comparatively small portions that Russia’s navy is prone to want may permit it to amass elements surreptitiously, stated Malcolm Penn, the chief government of London-based semiconductor analysis agency Future Horizons.
“Should you solely need 500 or 1,000 it’s simply doable, and really laborious to cease,” he stated. “All all through the Chilly Struggle, when in concept there have been no exports to the Soviet Union, that didn’t cease them from getting issues. There are at all times males with suitcases that exit to the Far East and purchase stuff and are available again.”
One other huge wild card is China, which might thwart any U.S. try to choke off chips to Russia. CAR estimated that the drones it examined had been constructed between 2013 and 2016, when Western suppliers had been extra dominant within the chip trade. China has since turn into a a lot greater producer of digital elements, and is unlikely to completely adjust to any tried blockade, know-how consultants stated.
Russia depends on Asian and Western nations to provide most of its shopper electronics and pc chips, that are the brains that make electronics operate. Russia’s imports of those items in 2020 exceeded $38 billion, in line with United Nations commerce knowledge.
The Soviet Union had quite a lot of small semiconductor factories churning out chips, principally for navy use, in line with Penn, who visited among the amenities within the early Nineteen Nineties. However the Soviet breakup pushed Russia into an extended interval of turmoil that thwarted growth of high-tech industries and manufacturing.
“The microelectronics trade was utterly decimated within the Nineteen Nineties,” stated Sam Bendett, a Russian-military analyst on the Virginia-based analysis group CNA. “It was simply simpler to import these applied sciences, which had been extensively obtainable within the international market.”
The Russian and Ukrainian embassies in Washington didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Russia retains some producers that produce chips of older designs, together with Mikron, which was based in Soviet occasions close to Moscow. Enterprises within the nation additionally design chips identified by the names Baikal and Elbrus — the latter are utilized by the navy — however ship lots of the designs to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm, the world’s largest chip foundry, for fabrication.
Russian protection contractors in recent times have claimed to have revived some home manufacturing of high-tech navy gear, together with drones and their elements, Bendett stated.
Americaand the European Union already prohibit their exports of defense-related electronics to Russia and have toughened these guidelines in recent times.But Russian networks have discovered methods round these obstacles. In 2015, a number of Russian brokers had been convicted of, or pleaded responsible to, federal prices of utilizing a Texas-based firm they set as much as illegally export high-tech chips to Russian navy and intelligence businesses.
Below the broader blockade that U.S. officers are contemplating, america might compel many nations worldwide to chop their chip exports to Russia by telling them they aren’t allowed to make use of U.S. know-how to make elements for Russian patrons. Most chip factories worldwide, together with these in China and Taiwan, use U.S. manufacturing instruments or software program of their manufacturing course of, analysts stated.
America might restrict the ban to Russia’s navy and high-tech sectors or might apply it extra broadly, doubtlessly depriving Russian residents of some smartphones, tablets and online game consoles, The Washington Put up just lately reported, citing administration officers.
On the invitation of Ukraine’s safety companies, Spleeters from CAR flew to Kyiv in late 2018 to dissect the drone that was shot down in 2017.
Utilizing a duffel bag full of screwdrivers, Allen keys and cameras, Spleeters disassembled and photographed the plane, searching for serial numbers and markings that might assist establish the place the components got here from.
He and his colleagues then contacted the part suppliers to attempt to hint how the components wound up within the drone.
One motion-sensing chip was manufactured by the British firm Silicon Sensing Programs, which makes elements for drones, automobile navigation techniques and industrial equipment. The corporate informed CAR that it offered the chip in August 2012 to a Russian civilian electronics distributor, sending it through UPS in a bundle with 50-odd elements, in line with the CAR report.
The Russian distributor informed Silicon Sensing that the chip was for use in a drone; it later added that it offered the chip to a Russian entity known as ANO PO KSI, which it stated bought such objects for academic establishments in Russia, in line with the CAR report.
On its web site, ANO PO KSI describes itself as a nonprofit that makes high-tech merchandise, together with doc scanners and cameras, for the Russian authorities and enterprise prospects. The group didn’t reply to a request for remark.
In an electronic mail to The Put up, Silicon Sensing stated it “vigorously” complies “with all export management legal guidelines and insurance policies in every single place we do enterprise.”
“These elements had been offered in 2012 to a business firm that was not on an embargo checklist at the moment. We’ve ceased doing enterprise with that firm and any associated entities,” Silicon Sensing added.
The drone additionally contained U.S.-made elements designed for navigation and wi-fi communication. One of many suppliers, Digi Worldwide, based mostly in Hopkins, Minn., informed CAR that it offered the wi-fi communications part to a U.S.-based distributor in March 2012, however that the distributor was unable to establish the final word recipient, in line with the CAR report.
Digi Worldwide informed The Put up that it screens all gross sales to make certain it isn’t supplying any prohibited events in violation of U.S. export management legal guidelines.
“We have no idea how the product in query ended up in a Russian drone. We don’t condone using our modules by overseas actors in navy use circumstances,” the corporate stated in an emailed assertion.
Maxim Built-in, of San Jose, Calif., informed CAR that it manufactured a navigation partdiscovered within the dronein 2013 and shipped it to its distributors in January 2014. It added that the part “isn’t designed to be used in unmanned aerial autos.”
Maxim’s father or mother firm, Analog Gadgets, declined to make clear for The Put up what the part is used for. In an emailed assertion, the corporate stated it “is dedicated to full compliance with U.S. legal guidelines together with U.S. export controls, commerce sanctions and rules.”
Different firms in Switzerland and the U.Okay. informed CAR they had been unable to trace the chain of suppliers that had dealt with their elements.
The drone’s engine — a single-cylinder unit with an digital ignition — traveled a very mysterious route, from a small firm close to Frankfurt, Germany, that makes components for mannequin airplanes.
The corporate, 3W-Modellmotoren Weinhold, which didn’t reply to The Put up’s request for remark, informed CAR that it had despatched the engine to World Logistic Group, an organization based mostly within the Czech Republic, in October 2013.
The Czech firm, which ceased operations in 2018, couldn’t be reached for remark. The corporate was based within the spa city of Karlovy Differ in 2008 by two residents of Moscow, in line with Czech enterprise registration paperwork recognized by CAR and reviewed by The Put up.
From 2012 to 2014, a 3rd Moscow-area resident served as a director of the corporate, in line with these paperwork. CAR researchers discovered that this individual was additionally a member of an advisory council to the Principal Directorate of Public Safety for Moscow’s regional authorities.
The directorate was established to “implement state coverage within the area of public and financial safety,” in line with the web site of Moscow’s regional authorities.
In line with CAR, related drone fashions have been recovered after flying over Syria and Libya, nations the place Russian troops or mercenaries have additionally engaged in navy motion. Lithuania, a member of NATO, found an equivalent mannequin that crashed on its territory in 2016. That one contained foreign-made elements and Russian software program, in line with CAR and Lithuanian safety companies.
The case exhibits “that Russia makes use of [drones] for intelligence assortment not solely in battle zones but in addition in peacetime in neighbouring NATO nations,” Lithuanian authorities stated in a 2019 doc.
British components have been found in Russian-made spy drones captured by Ukrainian and Lithuanian forces, a report shows.
The parts are among European kit discovered on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) deployed over Ukraine and neighbouring countries during the conflict in the country’s eastern Donbass region, researchers have found.
Ukraine is under the threat of invasion, with an estimated 130,000 Russian troops massed over the border and in Belarus and Crimea.
The three-year investigation suggests that the Kremlin is using an opaque supply line to circumvent EU and US embargoes preventing it from buying electronic components for military use. The study traced the flow of weapons and military vehicles to Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass, who have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
One of the drones bearing UK-made parts was captured by Ukrainian defence and security forces near the coastal city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region, where the insurgents have established a self-declared republic.
An autopsy on the equipment by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) found an inertial sensor, a type of measurement unit, made by a British firm named in the report as Silicon Sensing Systems.
There is no suggestion that the company broke any laws or knew the part would end up being used for military purposes.
The UAV, which was downed on February 8, 2017, was examined by the researchers as they documented materiel used in the conflict between Ukrainian forces and the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass.
Another part made by the company was found in a drone that crashed in Lithuania in October 2016, according to CAR.
The project is ongoing at a time when the US has committed 3,000 additional troops to eastern Europe and NATO allies have sent defensive weaponry and small contingents of personnel to Ukraine.
The spy drone examined by researchers was found to have a unit made in the UK (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
Damien Spleeters, deputy director of operations at CAR, told Metro.co.uk: ‘The conflict in eastern Ukraine has been covered by the media since 2014 and the common narrative is that the weapons used there are mostly old Soviet equipment. We wanted to put that narrative to the test.
‘We found that, as usual, the truth is more complex than that.
‘People might not be surprised at hearing that the weapons used in eastern Ukraine almost exclusively come from the Russian Federation, but the Russian drones we examined there held something more unexpected: A lot of their critical components actually come from the EU, the UK, and the US.’
The report states that Silicon Sensing Systems, which provided information to CAR, sold the DMU02 unit to Radiant-Elcom CJSC, now known as Radiant Group LLC, a Russian civilian electronics distributor.
Radiant said the end customer was a company serving ‘various educational institutional institutions’ in the country, according to the researchers.
The final destination was found to be ANO ‘PO KSI’, which produces aerial surveillance systems for the Russian Ministry of Defence.
The company was sanctioned by the US in 2016 for allegedly aiding Russian military intelligence agency cyber-operations.
European-made electrical kit has been found on spy drones recovered in Ukraine and EU countries (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
European-made electrical kit has been found on spy drones recovered in Ukraine and EU countries (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
The measurement unit provided by the UK company was sold before August 1, 2014, when the EU and US banned trade in arms or ‘related material’ with Russian firms. Another unit made by the Plymouth-based firm was found on the drone recovered by the Lithuanian authorities.
The report states that it was most likely sold to Radiant-Elcom between 2014 and 2015. Neither of the commercial parts traced back to the British company are on the UK Strategic Export Control List.
Another electrical component found on the drone recovered in Ukraine was apparently made by NGK Spark Plugs in Japan, which states on its website that its parts should not be used in flight applications.
The report documented weapons recovered in eastern Ukraine where the government has been fighting separatists (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
CAR asked the company’s Hertfordshire-based UK branch to assist in tracing the spark plug, but it was not able to determine the origin or supply of the product based on the limited information available to the researchers.
The disassembled grey drone carries the serial number 2166 and an illegible number on a circuit board, part of a pattern of identifying details being obscured on some of the recovered weapons and vehicles.
The investigation also found parts sent by a German company to Russian-owned World Logistics Group, which was registered in the Czech Republic before ceasing trading in October 2018.
(Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
An under-barrel grenade launcher documented in Mariupol (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
(Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
A designated marksman rifle documented by researchers (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
One of the directors was a ‘Russian citizen with links to political and security agencies of the Russian government’, according to the researchers.
There is no proof that the company was acting on behalf of the state and CAR is carrying out work to ‘determine its activities and motivation’ in the wake of its report, entitled Weapons of the War in Ukraine.
Wider use of Russian-made drones is evident from others recovered in EU member states, which have included British, Czech, French, German, Spanish and US components, the researchers say.
The UAVs are among a wide range of weaponry linked to Russia by CAR, which examined kit linked to the conflict between Ukraine and the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk’s People’s Republics.
(Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
Detail of an obliterated area from the motherboard of a drone recovered in eastern Ukraine (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
The researchers also examined 43 weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, landmines, hand grenades, mortars and pistols.
Factories based in what today is the Russian Federation were found to have made the majority of 4,793 rounds of small-calibre ammunition and all but two of the arms examined.
Some of the materiel had certain identifying marks ‘obliterated’, probably to conceal evidence of the origin and diversion points for the hardware and components, according to CAR, an independent organisation which investigates weapons flows across the world.
(Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
A multiple rocket launcher documented by the researchers in Kyiv (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
(Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
The rocket launcher was found to have had an identification plaque unscrewed (Picture: Conflict Armament Research)
The UK and US are among NATO countries that have sent ‘lethal aid’, including portable anti-tank weapons, to Ukraine as tensions with the Kremlin continue to escalate.
With fresh sanctions threatened by the West as a response to Russian aggression, the report suggests a complex chain of companies is being used to secure components for battlefield gear despite the embargoes.
Moscow has denied it is planning to invade Ukraine and accused the West of seeking to provoke it into a confrontation in the region.
Mr Spleeters and his colleagues are continuing to look into several of the cases presented in the report. ‘In this kind of situation, there is always some ebb and flow of conflicting narratives where pieces of information are being used and distorted,’ he said.
‘We think it’s crucial to provide a front-line account of what is actually being used, in terms of weapons and equipment, not only against Ukrainian forces in their country, but against EU member states in the case of the drones we’ve documented.’
NGK Spark Plugs (UK) Ltd was unable to determine the origins and supply route of the component detailed in the report.
In a statement, the company said: ‘As NGK Spark Plugs (UK) Ltd we distribute spark plugs on a wholesale basis to a variety of automotive, motorcycle and horticultural distributors.
‘Our spark plugs are commodity products available via parts distributors, retail accessory shops and the internet etc. Spark plugs are not manufactured in the UK but are distributed only as detailed above.
‘The majority of products are actually manufactured by NGK Spark Plug Co. Ltd in Japan, who clearly state on their website that NGK spark plugs should not be used in any flight applications.’
Metro.co.uk has approached Silicon Sensing Systems for comment.
Russian-made military drones containing British components are being used by pro-Russian separatist forces in Ukraine and can now be used to target UK soldiers deployed there in the event of an invasion of Moscow, I to learn.
Arms experts said an analysis of Russian-made surveillance planes intercepted over Ukraine showed they were made with electronics and mechanical parts originating from Western countries, including the United Kingdom, which are lined up to oppose the Kremlin’s increasingly aggressive strategy toward Kiev.
It is likely that this equipment will be used against Ukraine in the event of a conflict with Russia in the coming days or weeks. Former military commanders said I They worry that drones could be used against British forces sent to advise Ukraine as they prepare for a possible invasion.
General Lord Richard Dannatt, former head of the British Army, said the outcome was “entirely possible”. The former Chief of the General Staff added: “Drones have become a reality in the airspace and on the battlefield.”
When asked if he thought 100 British troops in Ukraine could be targeted by Russian planes, Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, said “they certainly could be” if they were operating near the front line.
He called for “tightening of export regulations and control of exports to Russia of any kind that might have a military advantage.”
The government said I It intends to clamp down on such sales with new export rules, in clear acknowledgment of existing loopholes
Britain is one of several countries, including the United States, that in recent weeks has supplied Ukraine with advanced weapons designed to deter a Russian attack. London sent a shipment of advanced anti-tank missiles to Kiev earlier this month.
But the evidence suggests that Russian defense manufacturers — responsible for largely modernizing President Vladimir Putin’s military machine in recent years — have managed to circumvent export rules to acquire Western components to allow them to produce military equipment likely to be used against Ukraine in the event of a conflict.
Research conducted by specialists in London has found that six drones shot down in eastern Ukraine as recently as April 2020 contain advanced parts sourced from the West from Russian defense manufacturers.
More about Ukraine
According to government figures, Britain officially exports only trace amounts of defense or security equipment to Russia. Since 2015, only £1.5 million licenses have been approved, the vast majority of which are ammunition for sport or hunting.
But the evidence suggests that advanced materials of importance and use for the Russian military were making their way into the Russian war machine via other routes.
The study by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), funded by the European Union and the German government, found that a Russian reconnaissance drone, shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2017, contained specialized electronics manufactured by Plymouth-based Silicon Sensing Systems. Ltd.
There is no indication of any wrongdoing by the company. Her Russian customer, a civilian electronics distributor in Moscow, told her that the “end user” was a company serving “educational institutions”. Because the equipment being sold did not appear on any British government lists of controlled goods, the company did not request an export license for the component and the sale was made before new controls were imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Silicon Sensing Systems has not responded to requests from I to comment. But in correspondence with CAR, the company said that none of the items it provided to its Russian customer exceeded the “performance standards” that would have required a UK export license, and that it was given no indication that its products were intended for the defense manufacturer.
Automotive Research Center investigators found that rather than being destined for use in an educational setting, the final destination of the company component was in fact a supplier of air surveillance systems to the Russian Ministry of Defense. In 2017, the company, PO KSI, was named in sanctions by Washington for allegedly supporting malicious cyber operations by Russian military intelligence.
The study found that an identical Russian-made drone of the type with a British-made component was found that crashed in Lithuania in 2016. CAR said that this drone contained an updated version of the silicon sensor systems component, but again the part did not meet The threshold for requesting an export license.
A separate report by Lithuanian authorities found that the drone was on a surveillance mission to Poland and was of the type known to be used by Moscow’s security services.
How the once dilapidated Russian army is now a deadly force
Russia’s modern, well-armed and deadly armed forces are the result of a two-decade push by Vladimir Putin to place a new era of military power at the heart of Moscow’s foreign policy.
When he came to power in 2000, he inherited a nuclear-armed but shrinking post-Soviet army that relied on conscripts and communist-era equipment.
The Kremlin’s ability in 2022 to deploy an advanced combat force equipped with the latest technology, and in some cases significantly ahead of Western arms, comes on the heels of massive spending to develop the military. The country spends more on defense as a share of GDP than the United States.
Thus, Moscow can deploy hypersonic missiles allegedly capable of deploying nuclear weapons at 20 times the speed of sound, and has tanks waiting on Ukraine’s border that are among the best aircraft in the world, complete with a state-of-the-art night. Fight the visual system.
But at the same time, the Russian system has weaknesses. For all its strength in certain sectors, analysts say it lacks the domestic high-tech civilian manufacturing capacity that it has grown in other countries. As a result, Russia’s military-industrial sector has been forced to source technology from abroad, which has led to challenges with export rules and sanctions.
Kahal Melmo
The CAR study, which examined Russian-made drones that either crashed or were shot down between 2015 and 2020, found evidence of components from countries including Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, America and the Czech Republic.
Components believed to have been supplied by British companies included specialized spark plugs and a shipment of electronics delivered in 2020 to a Russian drone maker whose products include the Kremlin’s first armed long-endurance drone, or UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle).
“Our analysis and tracing efforts reveal that independent Russian electronics and components distributors obtained … foreign technology on behalf of sanctioned Russian defense and security entities,” the report said.
A British defense source said I The drones shot down by Ukrainian forces formed part of the known Russian drone fleet and are likely to be used in the event of an invasion. “If things go wrong, the Russians will throw everything they have,” the source said. “And that will certainly include their drone surveillance capabilities.”
In both Germany and the United States, authorities have investigated allegations that Russian defense companies have deployed similar tactics to obtain advanced materials for night vision equipment, machine tools and semiconductors.
CAR said there was evidence that Russia was able to take advantage of a “general lack of clarity” about exporters’ responsibility to determine “end-use” and “end-user” components, and the rules regarding “dual-use” technology could be used in both civilian and military applications. .
Tell Mike Lewis, Head of Investigations for the Central African Republic IExport control regimes in the United Kingdom and the European Union face the same challenges in preventing sophisticated commercial technology from reaching military manufacturers in embargoed destinations such as the Russian Federation.
“Currently, exporters are not obligated to carry out even basic due diligence towards their customers in such destinations. They simply have to wait until they are told by their government – or less commonly, their customers – that their products are for military purposes. There is no organized system for notifying exporters that Their products are found in military systems.”
Activists said there was particular concern in Britain about the UK’s ability to verify where products licensed for export had come from.
Dr Samuel Pirlo Freeman, Research Coordinator for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade said: “Overall, the UK makes no attempt to pursue the final destination and use of licensed equipment, in most cases. The potential for diversion of military and dual-use equipment provided by the UK is therefore the To unauthorized destinations is great.”
Former Conservative Trade Secretary Marc Garnier, chair of the Arms Export Controls Committee (CAEC), said on Friday the findings were “extremely concerning” and that it was “critically important” Britain to prevent key technology from reaching its opponents.
Garnier said that the adequacy of UK end-use controls and verification procedures was a key part of parliamentary scrutiny.
Tell I: “Reports that British-made goods have been used in eastern Ukraine are of deep concern. It is critical that we prevent the diversion of UK exports for hostile purposes… It also illustrates the need for an export control system that is able to adapt quickly to global changes, not only in terms of demand for new licenses but also those already granted.”
Labor MP Lloyd Russell Moyle, who sits at the CAEC, said he would ask the commission to investigate whether the findings mean the current system is powerful enough to thwart Moscow’s efforts to acquire British and Western technology.
Tell I: “An essential part of any arms control regime that people who seek to harm us or our allies cannot obtain the resources or technology that we or our allies produce. If these technologies end up in the hands of the adversary, we should ask very serious questions.”
The Department for International Trade, which oversees defense exports, said the government was looking to expand the definition of “military end use” to better deal with scenarios in which the sale of UK-made components could lead to threats to “national security, international peace and human rights”.
A spokesperson for the Department of Trade and Industry said: “The UK takes its export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world.”
Pro-Russian separatist forces in Ukraine are using Russian-made military drones with British components, which could now be used to attack UK troops stationed there if Moscow invades.i has learned.
An analysis of Russian-built surveillance drones intercepted over Ukraine found that they were built with electronics and mechanical parts from Western countries, including the United Kingdom, which are uniting to oppose the Kremlin’s increasingly belligerent strategy toward Kyiv.
Should a conflict with Russia occur in the coming days or weeks, this equipment is likely to be used against Ukraine. Former military commanders have expressed their dissatisfaction with the current administration’s handlingiThey are concerned that the drones could be used against British forces stationed in Ukraine to advise it as it prepares for a possible invasion.
Former British Army chief General Lord Richard Dannatt stated that such a scenario was “quite possible.” “Drones are becoming a fact in the airspace and the battle space,” the former Chief of General Staff continued.
Colonel Richаrd Kemp, who commаnded British forces in Afghаnistаn in 2003, sаid “they certаinly could be” if they were operаting neаr the front line when аsked if he thought the 100 British troops in Ukrаine could be tаrgeted by Russiаn аircrаft.
He cаlled for “tighter export regulаtions аnd control of аll exports to Russiа thаt could hаve militаry utility.”
The Government hаs told ithаt it intends to use new export rules to crаck down on such sаles, implying thаt existing loopholes аre being exploited.
The United Kingdom is one of severаl countries, including the United Stаtes, thаt hаve recently provided Ukrаine with аdvаnced weаponry аimed аt deterring а Russiаn аttаck. Eаrlier this month, London delivered to Kyiv а shipment of аdvаnced аnti-tаnk missiles.
However, evidence suggests thаt Russiаn defence mаnufаcturers – who hаve been responsible for significаntly upgrаding President Vlаdimir Putin’s militаry mаchine in recent yeаrs – аre аble to get аround export restrictions to obtаin Western components, аllowing them to produce militаry equipment thаt could be used аgаinst Ukrаine if а conflict аrises.
Six drones shot down in eаstern Ukrаine аs recently аs April 2020 contаined sophisticаted pаrts sourced from the West by Russiаn defense mаnufаcturers, аccording to reseаrch conducted by London-bаsed experts.
Officiаlly, the United Kingdom exports only smаll аmounts of defense аnd security equipment to Russiа, аccording to government stаtistics. Since 2015, only £1.5 million in licenses hаve been grаnted, the vаst mаjority of which аre for sporting or hunting аmmunition.
However, evidence suggests thаt аdvаnced militаry mаteriаl of interest аnd utility to Russiа’s militаry hаs entered Moscow’s wаr mаchine through other chаnnels.
One Russiаn-mаde surveillаnce drone shot down over eаstern Ukrаine in 2017 contаined speciаlist electronics mаnufаctured by а Plymouth-bаsed compаny, Silicon Sensing Systems Ltd, аccording to а study by Conflict Armаment Reseаrch (CAR), which wаs funded by the Europeаn Union аnd the Germаn government.
The compаny hаsn’t been аccused of аny wrongdoing. The ultimаte “end user” wаs а compаny serving “educаtionаl institutions,” аccording to its Russiаn customer, а civiliаn electronics distributor in Moscow. The compаny did not need аn export licence for the component becаuse it did not аppeаr on аny UK government lists of controlled goods, аnd the sаle took plаce before new controls were imposed following Russiа’s аnnexаtion of Crimeа in 2014.
Silicon Sensing Systems hаs yet to respond to our requests.ito аdd to the discussion However, in а letter to CAR, the compаny stаted thаt none of the items it hаd provided to its Russiаn customer exceeded “performаnce pаrаmeters” thаt would hаve required а UK export license, аnd thаt it hаd received no indicаtion thаt its products were destined for а defense mаnufаcturer.
The finаl destinаtion of the compаny’s component, аccording to CAR investigаtors, wаs а supplier of аeriаl surveillаnce systems to the Russiаn Ministry of Defense, rаther thаn being used in аn educаtionаl environment. PO KSI wаs sаnctioned by the US in 2017 for аllegedly аssisting Russiаn militаry intelligence in mаlicious cyber operаtions.
An identicаl Russiаn-mаde drone to the type found with the UK-mаde component crаshed in Lithuаniа in 2016, аccording to the study. This drone, аccording to CAR, hаd аn updаted version of the Silicon Sensing Systems component, but the pаrt did not meet the threshold for requiring аn export license once аgаin.
The drone hаd been on а surveillаnce mission to Polаnd, аccording to а sepаrаte report by Lithuаniаn аuthorities, аnd wаs of the type used by Moscow’s security services.
How Russiа’s once-derelict militаry hаs been trаnsformed into а deаdly force
Vlаdimir Putin’s two-decаde push to plаce а new erа of militаry might аt the center of Moscow’s foreign policy hаs resulted in Russiа’s well-аrmed аnd lethаl modern аrmed forces.
He inherited а nucleаr-аrmed, but otherwise depleted post-Soviet militаry reliаnt on conscripts аnd Communist-erа equipment when he cаme to power in 2000.
The Kremlin’s аbility in 2022 to deploy а sophisticаted fighting force complete with cutting-edge technology, in some cаses significаntly аheаd of Western weаponry, follows vаst spending to upgrаde the militаry. The country spends more on defence аs а shаre of GDP thаn even the United Stаtes.
Consequently, Moscow cаn deploy hypersonic missiles аllegedly cаpаble of deploying nucleаr weаpons аt 20 times the speed of sound, аnd hаs tаnks wаiting on Ukrаine’s borders which аer considered аmong the best in the world, complete with а stаte-of-the-аrt night-fighting opticаl system.
At the sаme time, however, the Russiаn system hаs weаknesses. For аll its prowess in certаin sectors, аnаlysts sаy it lаcks the home-grown civiliаn high-tech mаnufаcturing cаpаcity thаt other countries do. As а result, the Russiаn militаry-industriаl sector hаs been forced to source technology from аbroаd, running the gаuntlet of export rules аnd sаnctions.
Cаhаl Milmo
The CAR study, which scrutinised Russiаn-mаde drones which either crаshed or were shot down between 2015 аnd 2020, found evidence of components from countries including Britаin, Frаnce, Germаny, Spаin, Switzerlаnd, Americа аnd the Czech Republic.
The components believed to hаve been supplied by UK compаnies included speciаlist spаrk plugs аnd а consignment of electronics delivered in 2020 to а Russiаn militаry drone mаnufаcturer whose products include the Kremlin’s first long-endurаnce аrmed drone, or UAV (Unmаnned Aeriаl Vehicle).
The report sаid: “Our аnаlysis аnd trаcing efforts reveаl thаt independent Russiаn electronics аnd component distributors аcquired… foreign technology on behаlf of sаnctioned Russiаn defence аnd security entities.”
A UK defence source told i thаt the drones downed by the Ukrаiniаn forces formed pаrt of the known Russiаn UAV fleet аnd were likely to be used in the event of аn invаsion. The source sаid: “If things go hot, then the Russiаns will throw everything they’ve got аt it. Thаt would certаinly include their UAV surveillаnce cаpаbilities.”
In both Germаny аnd the US, the аuthorities hаve investigаted аllegаtions thаt Russiаn defence compаnies hаve deployed similаr tаctics to obtаin аdvаnced mаteriаls for night vision equipment, mаchine tools аnd semiconductors.
CAR sаid there wаs evidence thаt Russiа hаd been аble to benefit from а “generаl lаck of clаrity” over the responsibility of exporters to estаblish the “end use” аnd “end user” of components, аnd the rules concerning “duаl use” technology, cаpаble of being used in both civiliаn аnd militаry аpplicаtions.
Mike Lewis, heаd of investigаtions for CAR, told i: “Both UK аnd EU export control regimes fаce the sаme chаllenges of preventing sophisticаted commerciаl technology reаching militаry mаnufаcturers in embаrgoed destinаtions like the Russiаn Federаtion.
“At present, exporters hаve no obligаtion to undertаke even bаsic due diligence on their customers in such destinаtions. They simply hаve to wаit until they аre told by their government – or, less commonly, their customers – thаt their products аre destined for militаry purposes. And there is no orgаnised system for notifying exporters thаt their products hаve been found in militаry systems.”
Cаmpаigners sаid thаt in Britаin there wаs а pаrticulаr concern over the UK’s аbility to check where products licensed for export end up.
Dr Sаmuel Perlo-Freemаn, reseаrch co-ordinаtor аt Cаmpаign Agаinst Arms Trаde, sаid: “In generаl, the UK does not mаke аny аttempt to follow up on the finаl destinаtion аnd use of licenced equipment, in most cаses. The potentiаl for diversion of UK-supplied militаry аnd duаl-use equipment to unаuthorised destinаtions is therefore substаntiаl.”
Former Conservаtive trаde minister Mаrk Gаrnier, the chаirmаn of the Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC), sаid on Fridаy thаt the findings were “deeply concerning” аnd it wаs “pаrаmount” for Britаin to prevent key technology reаching its аdversаries.
Mr Gаrnier sаid thаt the аdequаcy of Britаin’s end-use controls аnd verificаtion procedures wаs а key pаrt of Pаrliаmentаry scrutiny.
He told i: “Reports thаt UK-mаnufаctured goods аre being used in eаstern Ukrаine аre deeply concerning. It is pаrаmount thаt we prevent UK exports being diverted for аdversаriаl purposes… It аlso illustrаtes the need for аn export controls system thаt is аble to аdаpt аt speed to globаl chаnges, not just in terms of new licence аpplicаtions but аlso those аlreаdy grаnted.”
Lаbour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who sits on CAEC, sаid he would be аsking the committee to investigаte whether the findings meаn the current system is sufficiently robust to thwаrt Moscow’s efforts to obtаin British аnd Western technology.
He told i: “It is а fundаmentаl pаrt of аny аrms control system thаt people who seek to hаrm us or our аllies аre not аble to obtаin the resources or technology produced by us or our аllies. If these technologies аre ending up in the hаnds of аn аdversаry, we should be аsking very serious questions.”
The Depаrtment for Internаtionаl Trаde, which oversees defence exports, sаid the Government wаs looking to broаden the definition of “militаry end use” to better аddress scenаrios where the sаle of UK-mаde components could leаd to threаts to “nаtionаl security, internаtionаl peаce аnd humаn rights”.
A DIT spokesperson sаid: “The UK tаkes its export control responsibilities very seriously аnd operаtes one of the most robust аnd trаnspаrent export control regimes in the world.”
One day after the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded the assault had been planned 10 days earlier by an al-Qaeda affiliate, according to documents released Monday by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.
“The attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman,” said a preliminary intelligence report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, obtained through a lawsuit following a Freedom of Information Act request.
The group, which also conducted attacks against the Red Cross in Benghazi, was established by Abdul Baset Azuz, a “violent radical” sent by al-Qaeda to set up bases in Libya, the defense agency report said.
The attack was planned on Sept. 1, 2012, with the intent “to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge” for the killing of a militant in Pakistan and to memorialize the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the report said.
Four Americans were killed in the Benghazi attack, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
The incident became politically controversial because the White House initially described the attack as the result of a spontaneous protest. Republican critics said the White House intentionally played down that it was a terrorist attack, because it occurred so close to President Obama’s re-election.
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, was to appear this week before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, but the hearing was canceled after Clinton and the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., failed to agree on whether all the documents Gowdy requested had been given to the panel.
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Other documents released by Judicial Watch show that U.S. personnel in Libya had been monitoring weapons transfers from Benghazi to opposition forces in Syria, where al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood had taken the lead against Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country’s civil war. In late August 2012, the weapons included 500 sniper rifles, 300 rocket-propelled grenades and 400 howitzer missiles sent to small Syrian ports that handle little cargo, according to one of the reports.
The documents also predicted “dire consequences” of the Syrian civil war: that al-Qaeda’s well-established network in Syria, together with the ongoing conflict there and the influx of weapons and fighters, would lead to a resurgence for al-Qaeda in Iraq. That group, which had been defeated in Iraq by U.S. forces allied with Sunni tribes, did make a resurgence last year, when it broke with al-Qaeda, changed its name to the Islamic State and conquered huge swaths of Iraq and Syria.
“These documents are jaw-dropping,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president.”
Messages to the White House, the State Department and Clinton’s campaign spokesman were not immediately answered.
Salwa Bugaighis carries a wreath with a photo of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as she and others pay their respects to the victims of an attack on the U.S. consulate, on Sept. 17, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11 during the attack.Salwa Bugaighis carries a wreath with a photo of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as she and others pay their respects to the victims of an attack on the U.S. consulate, on Sept. 17, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11 during the attack. (Photo: Mohammad Hannon, AP)
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Salwa Bugaighis carries a wreath with a photo of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as she and others pay their respects to the victims of an attack on the U.S. consulate, on Sept. 17, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11 during the attack. Libyan military guards check a burned-out building at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 14, 2012. Glass, debris and overturned furniture are strewn inside a room at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 12, 2012, a day after the attack. A man walks through a damaged room. A man investigates the inside of the U.S. consulate. A person looks at a destroyed vehicle at the entrance of the American consulate building. An empty bullet casing lies on the ground near a destroyed vehicle. A man looks at documents at the U.S. consulate. People inspect the destroyed consulate. A man walks past the U.S. consulate. A building was burned during the attack. A destroyed car rests outside a burned building at the U.S. consulate. Vehicles belonging to Libyan investigators’ cars are parked in front of the U.S. consulate on Sept. 15, 2012.
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The Benghazi attack occurred less than two months before Obama’s bid for reelection in a tight race against Romney. The White House and State Department at first blamed the attack on protests to an anti-Islam film that sparked protests across the Muslim world, but later admitted there was no protest in Benghazi before the attack.
Administration officials later said conflicting information, including false media accounts, caused a delay of more than a week to identify the attack as pre-planned act of terrorism. Conservative critics have charged that information was withheld to preserve Obama’s claims at campaign events that al-Qaeda was “on the run.”
“These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits,” Fitton said. “The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said in January 2014 that talking points used by then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice in Sunday talk shows after the attack contained erroneous information, although they reflected what the intelligence community believed at the time.
Seventeen months before President Obama dismissed the Islamic State as a “JV team,” a Defense Intelligence Agency report predicted the rise of the terror group and likely establishment of a caliphate if its momentum was not reversed.
While the report was circulated to the CIA, State Department and senior military leaders, among others, it’s not known whether Obama was ever briefed on the document.
The DIA report, which was reviewed by Fox News, was obtained through a federal lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. Documents from the lawsuit also reveal a host of new details about events leading up to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack — and how the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria fueled the violence there.
The report on the growing threat posed by what is now known as the Islamic State was sent on Aug. 5, 2012.
The report warned the continued deterioration of security conditions would have “dire consequences on the Iraqi situation,” and huge benefits for ISIS — which grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
“This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi,” the document states, adding “ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”
ISIS would, in June 2014, go on to declare a caliphate in territory spanning Iraq and Syria, in turn drawing more foreign fighters to their cause from around the world.
CLICK TO READ THE DOCUMENTS GIVEN TO JUDICIAL WATCH FROM THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT AND STATE DEPARTMENT.
Also among the documents is a heavily redacted DIA report that details weapons operations inside Libya before the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi. The Oct. 5, 2012 report leaves no doubt that U.S. intelligence agencies were fully aware that lethal weapons were being shipped from Benghazi to Syrian ports.
The report said: “Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the Port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzers missiles.”
Current and former intelligence and administration officials have consistently skirted questions about weapons shipments, and what role the movement played in arming extremist groups the U.S. government is now trying to defeat in Syria and Iraq.
In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier broadcast May 11, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, deflected questions:
Baier: Were CIA officers tracking the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria?
Morell: I can’t talk about that.
Baier: You can’t talk about it?
Morell: I can’t talk about it.
Baier: Even if they weren’t moving the weapons themselves, are you saying categorically that the U.S. government and the CIA played no role whatsoever in the movement of weapons from Libya …
Morell: Yes.
Baier: — to Syria?
Morell: We played no role. Now whether we were watching other people do it, I can’t talk about it.
While the DIA report was not a finished intelligence assessment, such Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) are vetted before distribution, a former Pentagon official said.
The October 2012 report may also be problematic for Hillary Clinton, who likewise skirted the weapons issue during her only congressional testimony on Benghazi in January 2013. In an exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is now a Republican candidate for president, the former secretary of state said, “I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody’s ever raised that with me.”
Referring to Fox News’ ongoing reporting that a weapons ship, Al Entisar, had moved weapons from Libya to Turkey with a final destination of Syria in September 2012, Paul responded, “It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons.” He asked whether the CIA annex which came under attack on Sept. 11, 2012 was involved in those shipments.
Clinton answered: “Well, senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available.”
In a follow-up letter, the State Department Office of Legislative Affairs provided a narrow response to the senator’s question, and did not speak to the larger issue of weapons moving from Libya to Syria.
“The United States is not involved in any transfer of weapons to Turkey,” the February 2013 letter from Thomas B. Gibbons, acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, said.
Heavily redacted congressional testimony, declassified after the House intelligence committee Benghazi investigation concluded, shows conflicting accounts were apparently given to lawmakers.
On Nov. 15 2012, Morell and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified “Yes” on whether the U.S. intelligence community was aware arms were moving from Libya to Syria. This line of questioning by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who is now the intelligence committee chairman, was shut down by his predecessor Mike Rogers, R-Mich., who said not everyone in the classified hearing was “cleared” to hear the testimony, which means they did not have a high enough security clearance.
An outside analyst told Fox News that Rogers’ comments suggest intelligence related to the movement of weapons was a “read on,” and limited to a very small number of recipients.
Six months later, on May 22, 2013, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, now chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked if the CIA was “monitoring arms that others were sending into Syria.” Morell said, “No, sir.”
The Judicial Watch documents also contain a DIA report from Sept. 12, 2012. It indicates that within 24 hours of the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty at the CIA annex, there were strong indicators that the attack was planned at least a week in advance, and was retaliation for a June 2012 drone strike that killed an Al Qaeda strategist — there is no discussion of a demonstration or an anti-Islam video, which were initially cited by the Obama administration as contributing factors.
“The attack was planned ten or more days prior to approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for the US killing of Aboyahiye (Alaliby) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.”
The DIA report also states a little-known group, “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman,” claimed responsibility, though the group has not figured prominently in previous congressional investigations. The document goes on to say the group’s leader is Abdul Baset, known by the name Azuz, “sent by (Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri) to set up Al Qaeda bases in Libya.”
“The Obama administration says it was a coincidence that it occurred on 9/11. In fact, their intelligence said it wasn’t a coincidence and in fact specifically the attack occurred because it was 9/11,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News.
Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.
By Catherine HerridgePublished May 18, 2015FoxNews.com
Secret official documents about the searching of three trucks belonging to Turkey’s national intelligence service (MIT) have been leaked online, once again corroborating suspicions that Ankara has not been playing a clean game in Syria. According to the authenticated documents, the trucks were found to be transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition. The Gendarmerie General Command, which authored the reports, alleged, “The trucks were carrying weapons and supplies to the al-Qaeda terror organization.” But Turkish readers could not see the documents in the news bulletins and newspapers that shared them, because the government immediately obtained a court injunction banning all reporting about the affair.
When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister, he had said, “You cannot stop the MIT truck. You cannot search it. You don’t have the authority. These trucks were taking humanitarian assistance to Turkmens.”
Since then, Erdogan and his hand-picked new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have repeated at every opportunity that the trucks were carrying assistance to Turkmens. Public prosecutor Aziz Takci, who had ordered the trucks to be searched, was removed from his post and 13 soldiers involved in the search were taken to court on charges of espionage. Their indictments call for prison terms of up to 20 years.
In scores of documents leaked by a group of hackers, the Gendarmerie Command notes that rocket warheads were found in the trucks’ cargo.
According to the documents that circulated on the Internet before the ban came into effect, this was the summary of the incident:
On Jan. 19, 2014, after receiving a tip that three trucks were carrying weapons and explosives to al-Qaeda in Syria, the Adana Provincial Gendarmerie Command obtained search warrants.
The Adana prosecutor called for the search and seizure of all evidence.
Security forces stopped the trucks at the Ceyhan toll gates, where MIT personnel tried to prevent the search.
While the trucks were being escorted to Seyhan Gendarmerie Command for an extensive search, MIT personnel accompanying the trucks in an Audi vehicle blocked the road to stop the trucks. When MIT personnel seized the keys from the trucks’ ignitions, an altercation ensued. MIT personnel instructed the truck drivers to pretend their trucks had malfunctioned and committed physical violence against gendarmerie personnel.
The search was carried out and videotaped despite the efforts of the governor and MIT personnel to prevent it.
Six metallic containers were found in the three trucks. In the first container, 25-30 missiles or rockets and 10-15 crates loaded with ammunition were found. In the second container, 20-25 missiles or rockets, 20-25 crates of mortar ammunition and Douchka anti-aircraft ammunition in five or six sacks were discovered. The boxes had markings in the Cyrillic alphabet.
It was noted that the MIT personnel swore at the prosecutor and denigrated the gendarmerie soldiers doing the search, saying, “Look at those idiots. They are looking for ammunition with picks and shovels. Let someone who knows do it. Trucks are full of bombs that might explode.”
The governor of Adana, Huseyin Avni Cos, arrived at the scene and declared, “The trucks are moving with the prime minister’s orders” and vowed not to let them be interfered with no matter what.
With a letter of guarantee sent by the regional director of MIT, co-signed by the governor, the trucks were handed back to MIT.
Driver Murat Kislakci said in his deposition, “This cargo was loaded into our trucks from a foreign airplane at Ankara Esenboga Airport. We are taking them to Reyhanli [on the Syrian border]. Two men [MIT personnel] in the Audi are accompanying us. At Reyhanli, we hand over the trucks to two people in the Audi. They check us into a hotel. The trucks move to cross the border. We carried similar loads several times before. We were working for the state. In Ankara, we were leaving our trucks at an MIT location. They used to tell us to come back at 7 a.m. I know the cargo belongs to MIT. We were at ease; this was an affair of state. This was the first time we collected cargo from the airport and for the first time we were allowed to stand by our trucks during the loading.”
After accusations of espionage by the government and pro-government media, the chief of general staff ordered the military prosecutor to investigate,. On July 21, the military prosecutor declared the operation was not espionage. The same prosecutor said this incident was a military affair and should be investigated not by the public prosecutor, but the military. The civilian court did not retract its decision.
The government cover-up
Though the scandal is tearing the country apart, the government opted for its favorite tactic of covering it up. A court in Adana banned written, visual and Internet media outlets from any reporting and commenting on the stopping of the trucks and the search. All online content about the incident has been deleted.
The court case against the 13 gendarmerie elements accused of espionage has also been controversial. The public prosecutor, who in his indictment said the accused were involved in a plot to have Turkey tried at the International Criminal Court, veered off course. Without citing any evidence, the indictment charged that there was collusion between the Syrian government, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). The prosecutor deviated from the case at hand and charged that the killing by IS of three people at Nigde last year was actually carried out by the Syrian state.
At the moment, a total blackout prevails over revelations, which are bound to have serious international repercussions.
Mehmet Aşkar, one of the 11 suspected members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) currently being tried by the niğde High Criminal court, has said that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) helped them smuggle arms to opposition groups in Syria during the early stages of the country’s civil war, a Turkish daily has reported.
According to a story published in the Cumhuriyet daily on Monday, Turkish authorities are trying to divert public attention from the case because the prosecutor’s dossier has details which reveal the involvement of MİT in arms smuggling.
The 11 suspects in the case include a Syrian Turkmen who is allegedly linked with the anti-regime Free Syrian Army (FSA) and radical groups such as ISIL and al-Qaeda affiliates. Haisam Toubaljeh, also known as Heysem Topalca and who is also a suspect in the Reyhanlı attack case, according to Hürriyet, is believed to have been involved in numerous cases of smuggling as well as a transfer of rocket warheads to Syria that was intercepted in November 2013 by security forces in the southern city of Adana.
Aşkar said in the dossier that he had given his vehicle to Topalca in 2011 in the Yayladağı district of Hatay province when Topalca told Aşkar that he was planning to bring arms from Syria to Turkey and then send them to rebel groups in Syria. Aşkar added that Topalca had told him that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had seized some towns in northern Syria, blocking the previous routes that the rebel groups had used to transfer arms.
Cumhuriyet reported that Aşkar was told by Topalca that the smuggling would not be a problem in Turkey because he had contacts. Aşkar, Topalca and certain other Turkmens then took the arms to a village near the Syrian border in Hatay province. When they reached the village, Turkish gendarmerie teams carrying a jammer device asked them why they were in a military zone. Aşkar quoted Topalca as saying that they had permission to be there. “Topalca and the gendarmes made some telephone calls that I couldn’t hear. Without any checks on my vehicle, which was loaded with arms, we were taken to the border with a military escort,” Aşkar said. He then added that his vehicle, along with another that had joined them on the way, was taken by people who crossed from the Syrian side to collect the vehicles. According to Aşkar, Topalca told him that there were 100 rifles belonging to NATO in the vehicle and that the smuggling had been conducted with the approval and support of MİT.
This is not the only time that MİT has been accused of smuggling arms to Syria. In another incident, on Jan. 19, 2014, gendarmes were ordered by a prosecutor to stop trucks near the Syrian border in Adana on the suspicion that they were carrying arms to opposition groups in Syria, including al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. The government, apparently infuriated, quickly retaliated, removing the prosecutor from his post and blocking further investigation.
In November 2013, Turkish gendarmes seized a total of 935 rocket warheads from a truck in Adana near the Syrian border. The warheads had been manufactured in Adana and Konya provinces and, it is alleged, were being delivered to al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria.
Niğde court adjourns trial of ISIL suspects until March 5
The Niğde High Criminal Court has adjourned the trial of the 11 suspects, including the three suspects allegedly involved in an attack on Turkish security forces by ISIL in March of last year, after the first hearing held on Monday because no lawyers had been appointed to defend the suspects.
Judge Birol Küçük also asked for a reconsideration of the location of the trial due to security concerns. The Niğde Police Department warned the court that there was a risk of “provocation” if the trial were held in the province given that parliamentary elections, slated for June 7, are approaching.
Two security force members and one civilian were killed when the suspected ISIL members opened fire on a checkpoint manned by gendarmes and police officers in the Central Anatolian province of Niğde in March 2014. The three suspected ISIL attackers, Çendrim Ramadani, Benyamin Xu and Muhammad Zakiri, were arrested and put in an Ankara jail following the attack.
The police note to the court also stated that there were rumors of a prisoner swap between Turkey and ISIL and that a circulation of these rumors would be likely to result in increased public interest in the hearing. The authorities have refrained from responding to media reports that one of the three gunmen was released as part of an alleged swap with the extremist group under which as many as 180 captured militants were handed over to ISIL in mid-September in return for 49 people who were captured by the terrorist group in June from the Turkish Consulate General in Mosul.
The suspects, who attended the trial from Sincan Prison in Ankara via a video link, rejected the appointment of a lawyer, saying “God is our lawyer.” The prisoners stood behind the interpreters during the trial on Monday with their faces obscured and their voices were not clear, increasing the suspicions that a swap had taken place.
February 09, 2015, Monday/ 14:08:23/ TODAY’S ZAMAN / ISTANBUL
World View: New claims say Ankara worked with the US and Britain to smuggle Gaddafi’s guns to rebel groups
The US’s Secretary of State John Kerry and its UN ambassador, Samantha Power have been pushing for more assistance to be given to the Syrian rebels. This is despite strong evidence that the Syrian armed opposition are, more than ever, dominated by jihadi fighters similar in their beliefs and methods to al-Qa’ida. The recent attack by rebel forces around Latakia, northern Syria, which initially had a measure of success, was led by Chechen and Moroccan jihadis.
America has done its best to keep secret its role in supplying the Syrian armed opposition, operating through proxies and front companies. It is this which makes Seymour Hersh’s article “The Red Line and The Rat Line: Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian rebels” published last week in the London Review of Books, so interesting.
Attention has focussed on whether the Syrian jihadi group, Jabhat al-Nusra, aided by Turkish intelligence, could have been behind the sarin gas attacks in Damascus last 21 August, in an attempt to provoke the US into full-scale military intervention to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. “We now know it was a covert action planned by [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s people to push Obama over the red line,” a former senior US intelligence officer is quoted as saying.
Critics vehemently respond that all the evidence points to the Syrian government launching the chemical attack and that even with Turkish assistance, Jabhat al-Nusra did not have the capacity to use sarin.
A second and little-regarded theme of Hersh’s article is what the CIA called the rat line, the supply chain for the Syrian rebels overseen by the US in covert cooperation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The information about this comes from a highly classified and hitherto secret annex to the report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee on the attack by Libyan militiamen on the US consulate in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. The annex deals with an operation in which the CIA, in cooperation with MI6, arranged the dispatch of arms from Mu’ammer Gaddafi’s arsenals to Turkey and then across the 500-mile long Turkish southern frontier with Syria. The annex refers to an agreement reached in early 2012 between Obama and Erdogan with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar supplying funding. Front companies, purporting to be Australian, were set up, employing former US soldiers who were in charge of obtaining and transporting the weapons. According to Hersh, the MI6 presence enabled the CIA to avoid reporting the operation to Congress, as required by law, since it could be presented as a liaison mission.
In pictures: Syria surrenders a third of chemical weapons
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The US involvement in the rat line ended unhappily when its consulate was stormed by Libyan militiamen. The US diplomatic presence in Benghazi had been dwarfed by that of the CIA and, when US personnel were airlifted out of the city in the aftermath of the attack, only seven were reportedly from the State Department and 23 were CIA officers. The disaster in Benghazi, which soon ballooned into a political battle between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, severely loosened US control of what arms were going to which rebel movements in Syria.
This happened at the moment when Assad’s forces were starting to gain the upper hand and al-Qa’ida-type groups were becoming the cutting edge of the rebel military.
The failure of the rebels to win in 2012 left their foreign backers with a problem. At the time of the fall of Gaddafi they had all become over-confident, demanding the removal of Assad when he still held all Syria’s 14 provincial capitals. “They were too far up the tree to get down,” according to one observer. To accept anything other than the departure of Assad would have looked like a humiliating defeat.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar went on supplying money while Sunni states turned a blind eye to the recruitment of jihadis and to preachers stirring up sectarian hatred against the Shia. But for Turkey the situation was worse. Efforts to project its power were faltering and all its chosen proxies – from Egypt to Iraq – were in trouble. It was evident that al-Qa’ida-type fighters, including Jahat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) and Ahrar al-Sham were highly dependent on Turkish border crossings for supplies, recruits and the ability to reach safety. The heaviest intra-rebel battles were for control of these crossings. Turkey’s military intelligence, MIT, and the paramilitary Gendarmerie played a growing role in directing and training jihadis and Jabhat al-Nusra in particular.
The Hersh article alleges that the MIT went further and instructed Jabhat al-Nusra on how to stage a sarin gas attack in Damascus that would cross Obama’s red line and lead to the US launching an all-out air attack. Vehement arguments rage over whether this happened. That a senior US intelligence officer is quoted by America’s leading investigative journalist as believing that it did, is already damaging Turkey.
Part of the US intelligence community is deeply suspicious of Erdogan’s actions in Syria. It may also be starting to strike home in the US and Europe that aid to the armed rebellion in Syria means destabilising Iraq. When Isis brings suicide bombers from across the Turkish border into Syria it can as easily direct them to Baghdad as Aleppo.
The Pentagon is much more cautious than the State Department about the risks of putting greater military pressure on Assad, seeing it as the first step in a military entanglement along the lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel are the main opponents of a greater US military role. Both sides in the US have agreed to a programme under which 600 Syrian rebels would be trained every month and jihadis would be weeded out. A problem here is that the secular moderate faction of committed Syrian opposition fighters does not really exist. As always, there is a dispute over what weapons should be supplied, with the rebels, Saudis and Qataris insisting that portable anti-aircraft missiles would make all the difference. This is largely fantasy, the main problem being that the rebel military forces are fragmented into hundreds of war bands.
It is curious that the US military has been so much quicker to learn the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya than civilians like Kerry and Power. The killing of Ambassador Stevens shows what happens when the US gets even peripherally involved in a violent, messy crisis like Syria where it does not control many of the players or much of the field.
Meanwhile, a telling argument against Turkey having orchestrated the sarin gas attacks in Damascus is that to do so would have required a level of competence out of keeping with its shambolic interventions in Syria over the past three years.
Israeli arms dealers tried to send spare parts for F-4 Phantom aircraft via Greece to Iran in violation of an arms embargo, according to a secret probe by the US government agency Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) carried out in cooperation with the drugs and weapons unit of Greece’s Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE).
According to the probe, which Kathimerini has had access to, the operation was carried out in two phases – one in December 2012 and the second in April 2013. In both cases, officials traced containers packed with the F-4 parts on Greek territory. The cargo had been sent by courier from the Israeli town of Binyamina-Giv’at Ada and had been destined for Iran, which has a large fleet of F-4 aircraft, via a Greek company registered under the name Tassos Karras SA in Votanikos, near central Athens. SDOE officials established that the firm was a ghost company, while the company’s contact number was found to belong to a British national residing in Thessaloniki who could not be located.
According to HSI memos, the cargo appears to have been sent by arms dealers based in Israel, seeking to supply Iran in contravention of an arms embargo, and using Greece as a transit nation.
Last November, an Athens court ruled against the confiscation of the consignments and ordered that they be delivered to US authorities.
The US imposed sanctions against Iran in 1979, after a revolution which overthrew the Shah, extending them in 1995 to include firms dealing with the Iranian government. Several governments and multinationals have since followed suit.
ekathimerini.com , Sunday February 16, 2014 (15:23)
The Government was accused of “breathtaking laxity” in its arms controls last night after it emerged that officials authorised the export to Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make a nerve agent such as sarin a year ago.
The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, will today be asked by MPs to explain why a British company was granted export licences for the dual-use substances for six months in 2012 while Syria’s civil war was raging and concern was rife that the regime could use chemical weapons on its own people. The disclosure of the licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride, which can both be used as precursor chemicals in the manufacture of nerve gas, came as the US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had evidence that sarin gas was used in last month’s atrocity in Damascus.
Mr Kerry announced that traces of the nerve agent, found in hair and blood samples taken from victims of the attack in the Syrian capital which claimed more than 1,400 lives, were part of a case being built by the Obama administration for military intervention as it launched a full-scale political offensive on Sunday to persuade a sceptical Congress to approve a military strike against Syria.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills insisted that although the licences were granted to an unnamed UK chemical company in January 2012, the substances were not sent to Syria before the permits were eventually revoked last July in response to tightened European Union sanctions.
In a previously unpublicised letter to MPs last year, Mr Cable acknowledged that his officials had authorised the export of an unspecified quantity of the chemicals in the knowledge that they were listed on an international schedule of chemical weapon precursors.
Downing Street insisted today that Britain’s system for approving arms exports to Syria is working even though licences for two chemicals capable of being used in making nerve gas were approved by the Government and blocked only by EU sanctions.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “You see the system working, with materials not exported. The facts are that the licences were revoked and the exports did not take place. The Prime Minister’s view is that that demonstrates that the system is working. There is a sanctions regime, which is a very active part.”
Critics of the Business Secretary, whose department said it had accepted assurances from the exporting company that the chemicals would be used in the manufacture of metal window frames and shower enclosures, said it appeared the substances had only stayed out of Syria by chance.
The shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna told The Independent: “It will be a relief that the chemicals concerned were never actually delivered. But, in light of the fact the Assad regime had already been violently oppressing internal dissent for many months by the beginning of 2012 and the intelligence now indicates use of chemical weapons on multiple occasions, a full explanation is needed as to why the export of these chemicals was approved in the first place.”
The Labour MP Thomas Docherty, a member of the Commons Arms Export Controls Committee, will today table parliamentary questions demanding to know why the licences were granted and to whom.
He said: “This would seem to be a case of breath-taking laxity – the Government has had a very lucky escape indeed that these chemicals were not sent to Syria.
“What was Mr Cable’s department doing authorising the sale of chemicals which by their own admission had a dual use as precursors for chemical weapons at a time when the Syria’s war was long under way?”
The licences for the two chemicals were granted on 17 and 18 January last year for “use in industrial processes” after being assessed by Department for Business officials to judge if “there was a clear risk that they might be used for internal repression or be diverted for such an end”, according to the letter sent by Mr Cable to the arms controls committee.
Mr Cable said: “The licences were granted because at the time there were no grounds for refusal.”
Although the export deal, first reported by The Sunday Mail in Scotland, was outlawed by the EU on 17 June last year in a package of sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the licences were not revoked until 30 July. Chemical weapons experts said that although the two substances have a variety of uses such as the fluoridation of drinking water, sodium and potassium fluoride are also key to producing the chemical effect which makes a nerve agent such as sarin so toxic.
Western intelligence has long suspected the Syrian regime of using front companies to divert dual-use materials imported for industrial purposes into its weapons programmes. It is believed that chemical weapons including sarin have been used in the Syrian conflict on 14 occasions since 2012.
Mr Cable’s department last night insisted it was satisfied that the export licence was correctly granted. A spokesman said: “The UK Government operates one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world.
“The exporter and recipient company demonstrated that the chemicals were for a legitimate civilian end-use – which was for metal finishing of aluminium profiles used in making aluminium showers and aluminium window frames.”
Cahal Milmo, Andy McSmith, Nikhil Kumar
Monday, 2 September 2013
British companies were given government licences in January 2012 to export chemicals that could have been used to make nerve gas in Syria, ten months after civil broke out in the country, it was revealed Sunday.
The UK government approved licences for British firms in January 2012 to export chemicals to Syria that could have been used to produce nerve gas, it emerged Sunday.
Export licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride were granted ten months after the country descended into civil war, reports first published in the Scottish Sunday Mail revealed.
The licences specified that the chemicals should be used in industrial processes, but fluoride is also a key element in the production of chemical weapons such as sarin – thought to be the nerve gas used in the Assad regime’s alleged August 21 attack in a suburb of Damascus.
Although the licences were revoked six months later, this was due to EU-imposed sanctions on the Assad regime, rather than a decision by the UK government.
The issuing of the licences, by the Department for Innovation, Business and Skills, was confirmed by a little-publicised letter sent in September 2012 by Business Secretary Vince Cable to the House of Commons’ Arms Export Controls Committee.
US Government map of areas reportedly affected by Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack
In the letter, Cable admits that licences were “issued on 17 and 18 January 2012 and authorised the export of dual-use chemicals to a private company for use in industrial processes. The chemicals were sodium fluoride and potassium fluoride”.
The letter stresses that the chemicals “were to be used for metal finishing of aluminium profiles used for making aluminium showers” but admits that “they could also be used as precursor chemicals in the manufacture of chemical weapons”.
UK government ‘has very serious questions to answer’
The revelations come at a time when the US and France are pushing for military action against the Assad regime in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons. Britain, however, ruled itself out of taking part in any armed intervention in Syria following a surprise vote against such a move in the House of Commons last week.
While the August 21 attack, which according to the US killed at least 1,429 Syrians, took place months after the licences were approved, Syria has been suspected of using chemical weapons many times in the past.
Opposition MPs are now calling on the coalition government and Vince Cable in particular to explain the decision to sanction the exports.
“The chair of the joint intelligence committee confirmed last week that their assessment was that the Syrian regime had used lethal chemical weapons on 14 occasions from 2012,” said Labour’s shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna.
“There are, therefore, very serious questions to answer as to why, in January 2012, export licences for chemicals to Syria which could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons were approved.
“It will be a relief that the chemicals concerned were never actually delivered. But, in light of the fact the Assad regime had already been violently oppressing internal dissent for many months by the beginning of 2012 and the intelligence now indicates use of chemical weapons on multiple occasions, a full explanation is needed as to why the export of these chemicals was approved in the first place,” Umunna added.
Umunna’s statement follows comments made by Vince Cable last Wednesday, after the UK announced it was suspending export licences to Egypt because of the ongoing political turmoil.
Cable insisted that: “The UK position is clear: we will not grant export licences where there is a clear risk that goods might be used for internal repression.
He added: “The government takes its export responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world.”
FURIOUS politicians have demanded Prime Minister David Cameron explain why chemical export licences were granted to firms last January – 10 months after the Syrian uprising began.
BRITAIN allowed firms to sell chemicals to Syria capable of being used to make nerve gas, the Sunday Mail can reveal today.
Export licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride were granted months after the bloody civil war in the Middle East began.
The chemical is capable of being used to make weapons such as sarin, thought to be the nerve gas used in the attack on a rebel-held Damascus suburb which killed nearly 1500 people, including 426 children, 10 days ago.
President Bashar Assad’s forces have been blamed for the attack, leading to calls for an armed response from the West.
British MPs voted against joining America in a strike. But last night, President Barack Obama said he will seek the approval of Congress to take military action.
The chemical export licences were granted by Business Secretary Vince Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills last January – 10 months after the Syrian uprising began.
They were only revoked six months later, when the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Assad’s regime.
Yesterday, politicians and anti-arms trade campaigners urged Prime Minister David Cameron to explain why the licences were granted.
Dunfermline and West Fife Labour MP Thomas Docherty, who sits on the House of Commons’ Committees on Arms Export Controls, plans to lodge Parliamentary questions tomorrow and write to Cable.
He said: “At best it has been negligent and at worst reckless to export material that could have been used to create chemical weapons.
“MPs will be horrified and furious that the UK Government has been allowing the sale of these ingredients to Syria.
“What the hell were they doing granting a licence in the first place?
“I would like to know what investigations have been carried out to establish if any of this
material exported to Syria was subsequently used in the attacks on its own people.”
The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Angus Robertson MP, said: “I will be raising this in Parliament as soon as possible to find out what examination the UK Government made of where these chemicals were going and what they were to be used for.
“Approving the sale of chemicals which can be converted into lethal weapons during a civil war is a very serious issue.
“We need to know who these chemicals were sold to, why they were sold, and whether the UK Government were aware that the chemicals could potentially be used for chemical weapons.
“The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria makes a full explanation around these shady deals even more important.”
A man holds the body of a dead child
Reuters
Mark Bitel of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (Scotland) said: “The UK Government claims to have an ethical policy on arms exports, but when it comes down to practice the reality is very different.
“The Government is hypocritical to talk about chemical weapons if it’s granting licences to companies to export to regimes such as Syria.
“We saw David Cameron, in the wake of the Arab Spring, rushing off to the Middle East with arms companies to promote business.”
Some details emerged in July of the UK’s sale of the chemicals to Syria but the crucial dates of the exports were withheld.
The Government have refused to identify the licence holders or say whether the licences were issued to one or two companies.
The chemicals are in powder form and highly toxic. The licences specified that they should be used for making aluminium structures such as window frames.
Professor Alastair Hay, an expert in environmental toxicology at Leeds University, said: “They have a variety of industrial uses.
“But when you’re making a nerve agent, you attach a fluoride element and that’s what gives it
its toxic properties.
“Fluoride is key to making these munitions.
“Whether these elements were used by Syria to make nerve agents is something only subsequent investigation will reveal.”
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “The UK Government operates one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world.
“An export licence would not be granted where we assess there is a clear risk the goods might be used for internal repression, provoke or prolong conflict within a country, be used aggressively against another country or risk our national security.
“When circumstances change or new information comes to light, we can – and do – revoke licences where the proposed export is no longer consistent with the criteria.”
Assad’s regime have denied blame for the nerve gas attack, saying the accusations are “full of lies”. They have pointed the finger at rebels.
UN weapons inspectors investigating the atrocity left Damascus just before dawn yesterday and crossed into Lebanon after gathering evidence for four days.
They are now travelling to the Dutch HQ of the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons.
It could take up to two weeks for the results of tests on samples taken from victims of the attack, as well as from water, soil and shrapnel, to be revealed.
On Thursday night, Cameron referred to a Joint Intelligence Committee report on Assad’s use of chemical weapons as he tried in vain to persuade MPs to back military action. The report said the regime had used chemical weapons at least 14 times since last year.
Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday attacked America’s stance and urged Obama to show evidence to the UN that Assad’s regime was guilty.
Russia and Iran are Syria’s staunchest allies. The Russians have given arms and military backing to Assad during the civil war which has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
Putin said it would be “utter nonsense” for Syria to provoke opponents and spark military
retaliation from the West by using chemical weapons.
But the White House, backed by the French government, remain convinced of Assad’s guilt, and Obama proposes “limited, narrow” military action to punish the regime.
He has the power to order a strike, but last night said he would seek approval from Congress.
Obama called the chemical attack “an assault on human dignity” and said: “We are prepared to strike whenever we choose.”
He added: “Our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive. It will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now.
“And I’m prepared to give that order.”
Some fear an attack on Syria will spark retaliation against US allies in the region, such
as Jordan, Turkey and Israel.
General Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, described the Commons vote as a “victory for common sense and democracy”.
He added that the “drumbeat for war” had dwindled among the British public in recent days.
Among questionable ethical deals was £35m lent to Robert Mugabe and spent on BAE’s Hawk fighter jets
Robert Mugabe bought five BAE systems Hawk jets between 1989 and 1992 and deployed them in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
Britain’s arms industry and other companies are to be called before MPs to explain why taxpayer funds ended up helping Robert Mugabe to buy five Hawk fighter jets and 1,030 police Land Rovers which he later used to suppress dissent.
The bosses of the world’s biggest multinational defence and oil companies, including BAE Systems and BP, will be asked to account for why hundreds of millions of pounds of government money was used to help military dictators build up their arsenals, and facilitated environmental and human rights abuses across the world.
An official all-party inquiry into the government Export Credits Guarantee Department’s (ECGD) underwriting of the loans will begin to call witnesses next week, the Guardian has learned.
The all-party parliamentary group on international corporate responsibility will investigate more than 40 years of the government’s involvement in supporting dubious practices overseas. The actions of the ECGD have led to it being christened the “department for dodgy deals” by the Jubilee Debt Campaign.
Among the catalogue of ethically questionable deals was £35m lent to Zimbabwe to buy five Hawk fighter jets from BAE Systems between 1989 and 1992.
Zimbabwe, which was already heavily indebted at the time of the loans, spent £49m repaying the cost of the Hawks, according to a response to a freedom of information request from the Jubilee Debt Campaign seen by the Guardian.
Mugabe’s government deployed the jets in the 1998-2002 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s most deadly conflict in modern history, which led to 5.4m deaths.
At the time of deployment the British government approved Zimbabwe’s purchase of spare parts worth £5m-£10m despite concerns the aircraft were being used in the deadly Congo war, according to the journal Africana Bulletin.
The department also supplied Mugabe with £21m of loan guarantees to help him import 1,030 police Land Rovers and other military equipment. The vehicles were sent to Zimbabwe after Mugabe promised that they would be used “with due respect for human rights”. He specifically pledged not to use them for riot control, but Amnesty International said they were used to crush demonstrations.
The Land Rovers were sent to Zimbabwe in the late 1990s, before Mugabe began taking over white farmers’ land in 1999. Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, later banned the shipments.
The ECGD also supported the notorious al-Yamamah “oil for arms” deal with Saudi Arabia, for which BAE Systems was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office amid allegations of bribery and corruption. The inquiry was eventually dropped following the intervention of the then prime minister, Tony Blair.
The government loans also allowed the former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, and his predecessor Anwar Sadat, to buy arms, including helicopters and missiles, and helped Argentina buy two Type 42 Destroyers and two Lynx helicopters, which were later used in the invasion of the Falklands.
As well as arms, the department has provided funds for the world’s largest and riskiest oil-drilling project, in the Atlantic Ocean, and a 1,760km BP joint venture oil pipeline through the Caucasus.
The inquiry will this week begin asking arms and oil industry executives to provide evidence to parliament after pressure for the ECGD to clean up its act. The cross-party group of MPs will also call on former politicians to explain why they signed the deals. More than 100 MPs signed an early day motion calling for the ECGD to commit itself to transparent and open dealings in the future.
The ECGD, which is part of the business department and has changed its name to UK Export Finance (UKEF), was often used by arms companies to get a state-backed guarantee to recompense their banks if the deal fell through or the debtor failed to make repayments. In the 1980s the ECGD had 4,000 staff in branches across the country and offered backing for 40% of Britain’s exports.
Lisa Nandy, a Labour MP and chair of the all party group, said the department had committed “billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money” to projects that had been the subject of “countless criticisms” for human rights and environmental abuses.
“It is vital that we bring together all stakeholders and interested parties through this inquiry to look seriously at the allegations levelled at this department,” she said.
“This Department commits billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year. It has a responsibility to spend that money in a way that is ethical and effective. In the past it appears that this responsibility has not been taken seriously enough.”
“In a time of recession, business needs support from government but that support must be of long-term benefit for everyone: safeguarding human rights, protecting the environment and, at the very least, not exacerbating poverty.”
Tim Jones, policy officer at Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: “We welcome the launch of this inquiry. Vince Cable’s ‘Department for Dodgy Deals’ has a notorious track record of backing loans for undemocratic and damaging projects. UK Export Finance claims it is owed £2.3 billion. This includes loans for General Mubarak’s Egyptian army to buy British defence equipment, Argentina’s 1970s military dictatorship to buy British warships, and Robert Mugabe’s police to buy British Land Rovers. Vince Cable needs to implement Liberal Democrat policy and audit the debt, cancel that which is unjust, and reform UK Export Finance so no more dodgy deals are backed in the future.”
The inquiry has no legal power to force industry executives or former politicians to provide evidence.
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The Guardian, Monday 7 May 2012 19.39 BST
