The Microchip Pipeline: Hong Kong’s Hidden Role in Ukrainian Deaths

Putin has had to rely on a clique of enablers across the globe, especially since his botched lightning attack on Kyiv at the start of the war bogged him down into a protracted conflict.

Chief among these enablers is China, which has ratcheted up Sino-Russian trade by 64% to $240 billion since 2022. Via numerous routes, including through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it is also overseeing the transfer to Russia of equipment like computer chips and drones that can be deployed for the purpose of killing Ukrainians and depriving them of their territory. Many of these are Western-made components and subject to sanction, yet are being rerouted to Putin’s pleasure.

Undeterred by the screeching moral warning siren of being on the same side of a conflict as Kim Jong-un and Ali Khamenei, Hong Kong has leapt in to become a critical node in this web. In the first six months of 2023 alone, microelectronics worth $528 million were shipped from the city to Russia, where they are believed to embed in the defense-industrial sector, according to the nonprofit C4ADS, which tracks networks that facilitate war. The volume even surpassed that from China proper in May of the same year.