Destroyed apartments, burnt-out cars, lives upturned or extinguished altogether: Russia’s June 13 missile attack on the city of Kryvyi Rih was, in many ways, nothing out of the ordinary for wartime Ukraine.
The evening after the attack, which killed 13 civilians, President Volodymyr Zelensky came out in his daily address with a message of frustration: One of the missiles used in the attack had “around 50 components,” primarily microelectronics, produced outside of Russia.
On the same evening, President’s Office Head Andrii Yermak provided more details on Twitter: The missile used in the attack was a Kh-101 cruise missile, not from old stocks, but manufactured only two months earlier.
A view of damage after missile hits residential building in Kryvyi Rhi, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on June 13, 2023. (Arsen Dzodzaiev/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
For many, Russia’s ability to continue to produce new high-tech missiles over a year into the full-scale war has defied expectations.
For months over autumn and winter, as civilian energy infrastructure was being pounded in regular mass attacks all over Ukraine, Russia was said to be running out of missiles.
Figures published by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in January 2023 claimed that Russia was down to only 19% of its pre-invasion stocks of long-range strategic missiles, having fired 2,237 since Feb. 24, 2022, but only produced 516 in the same time period.
Meanwhile, sanctions introduced by the European Union and the United States at the onset of the full-scale invasion aimed to starve Russia of the components needed to manufacture new missiles, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying on Feb. 24, 2022, that Washington’s sanctions would cut off “more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports.”
In that context, Russia’s almost daily missile and drone barrage against Ukraine over May and early June, most of which was targeted at Kyiv, seemed like an unsustainable policy for Moscow.
Now, according to a Ukrainian internal document shared with the ambassadors of G7 member states and viewed by the Kyiv Independent, Ukrainian estimates have shifted, foreseeing a steady increase in Russian long-range missile production over the rest of 2023.
The primary reason this is possible is the uninterrupted supply of microchips and other high-tech components manufactured by semiconductor giants in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
The document lists a slew of Western-built chips in each of the main high-precision cruise and ballistic missiles regularly used against Ukraine. Many of the manufacturers listed are known to have had their components used in these weapons as early as last summer.
The internal document viewed by the Kyiv Independent showed components from American, European, and Japanese semiconductor giants in all of the main cruise and ballistic missiles regularly used against Ukraine.
The list of companies includes U.S.- based Texas Instruments, XILINX (subsidiary of AMD), AMD itself, Integrated Device Technology, Altera (subsidiary of Intel), and Cypress Technologies (subsidiary of Infineon), as well as Nexperia and Numonyx, from the Netherlands and Switzerland respectively.
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The evening after the attack, which killed 13 civilians, President Volodymyr Zelensky came out in his daily address with a message of frustration: One of the missiles used in the attack had “around 50 components,” primarily microelectronics, produced outside of Russia.
On the same evening, President’s Office Head Andrii Yermak provided more details on Twitter: The missile used in the attack was a Kh-101 cruise missile, not from old stocks, but manufactured only two months earlier.
A view of damage after missile hits residential building in Kryvyi Rhi, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on June 13, 2023. (Arsen Dzodzaiev/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
For many, Russia’s ability to continue to produce new high-tech missiles over a year into the full-scale war has defied expectations.
For months over autumn and winter, as civilian energy infrastructure was being pounded in regular mass attacks all over Ukraine, Russia was said to be running out of missiles.
Figures published by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in January 2023 claimed that Russia was down to only 19% of its pre-invasion stocks of long-range strategic missiles, having fired 2,237 since Feb. 24, 2022, but only produced 516 in the same time period.
Meanwhile, sanctions introduced by the European Union and the United States at the onset of the full-scale invasion aimed to starve Russia of the components needed to manufacture new missiles, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying on Feb. 24, 2022, that Washington’s sanctions would cut off “more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports.”
In that context, Russia’s almost daily missile and drone barrage against Ukraine over May and early June, most of which was targeted at Kyiv, seemed like an unsustainable policy for Moscow.
Now, according to a Ukrainian internal document shared with the ambassadors of G7 member states and viewed by the Kyiv Independent, Ukrainian estimates have shifted, foreseeing a steady increase in Russian long-range missile production over the rest of 2023.
The primary reason this is possible is the uninterrupted supply of microchips and other high-tech components manufactured by semiconductor giants in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
The document lists a slew of Western-built chips in each of the main high-precision cruise and ballistic missiles regularly used against Ukraine. Many of the manufacturers listed are known to have had their components used in these weapons as early as last summer.
The internal document viewed by the Kyiv Independent showed components from American, European, and Japanese semiconductor giants in all of the main cruise and ballistic missiles regularly used against Ukraine.
The list of companies includes U.S.- based Texas Instruments, XILINX (subsidiary of AMD), AMD itself, Integrated Device Technology, Altera (subsidiary of Intel), and Cypress Technologies (subsidiary of Infineon), as well as Nexperia and Numonyx, from the Netherlands and Switzerland respectively.
Kyiv’s frustration boils as flow of Western chips for Russian missiles continues uninterrupted
Destroyed apartments, burnt-out cars, lives upturned or extinguished altogether: Russia’s June 13 missile attack on the city of Kryvyi Rih was, in many ways, nothing out of the ordinary for wartime Ukraine. The evening after the attack, which killed 13 civilians, President Volodymyr Zelensky...