Sovereign cyberpunk: Despite sanctions, Western components are still being used to build Russia’s cyberwar machine

CPUs

Russia has yet to fully establish the domestic production of modern high-performance civilian chips. The Elbrus and Baikal CPUs were set to be manufactured by the Taiwanese factory TSMC, but it rejected the contracts due to sanctions. “Russian-made” servers still run on processors made by the U.S. companies Intel and AMD — this despite the official prohibition of such exports to Russia.

In fact, Intel, Altera, and AMD are the leading manufacturers of microprocessors and microcontrollers imported into Russia, and in 2024, Russia imported $13 million worth of CPUs manufactured by these companies. The key exporters to Russia are three Hong Kong-based shell companies: East Asia Electronics Trade Limited, QuantumFlow Limited, and Nexus Cloud Service Limited.

Another actor is the Thai company Exora, which advertises Intel and AMD products on its website, positioning itself as a “high volume Intel tray and boxed wholesale supplier.” However, Intel does not list this firm among its distributors in Thailand, and a name search on the Intel website does not return any matches. The company calls itself a “family-owned business,” but its founder is known only by his first name, Nikita. The Insider sent an inquiry to Exora but had not heard back as of the time of publication.

Despite its stated displeasure regarding the situation, the U.S. Senate has not responded with anything stronger than investigative reports making clear that it is fully aware of the American companies’ lax compliance efforts. But Serbian firm Kominvex also deserves our attention. It supplied Russia with flagship Intel Xeon processors of E, Gold, and Platinum series, which are either designed mostly for servers or have no household and office applications whatsoever.

Motherboards

Very few companies are trying to cut printed circuit boards and solder nodes and components onto them inside Russia. The two most visible exceptions are Yadro Fab Dubna and Norsi-Trans, but whether their attempts have been successful is hard to say.

Some people order “original” (that is, manufactured under a Russian trademark and possibly designed by Russian developers) motherboards in China. Most of Russia's servers are produced under two models: Original Equipment Manufacturer (assembly from ready-made foreign components) or Original Design Manufacturer (development and production of components to order at foreign factories and assembly in Russia).

Another company that promised a full in-house development cycle is Gagarin. However, judging by its list of components, the company's servers for 2022 run on Intel CPUs and Samsung memory modules.

In total, Russia imported $21 million worth of motherboards in 2024 — mainly from China and Taiwan and manufactured by Micro-Star, Asustek, and Giga-Byte. However, the leading exporters are not manufacturers, but bogey companies: Jin Tang Technology, the already mentioned East Asia Electronics Trade, Telperien, and Alburton Enterprises — a firm from the British Virgin Islands notorious for circumventing sanctions. One of Russia's leaders in circuit board imports is the Far Eastern company Stotechno, an entity of the large retailer DNS Group. In the ranking of brands imported into Russia, Inferit ranks third, just after Micro-Star and Asustek.