Austrian-looking sniper rifles surface in North Korea — possibly supplied by Russia which acquires them by skirting international sanctions

How European weapons reach Russia despite the embargo

A large share of firearms shipments to Russia goes unrecorded in international customs data. This may be due to the involvement of Russia’s Customs Union partners — Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — where trade flows are exempt from standard customs procedures. Nevertheless, The Insider has managed to trace several links from these supply chains.

Some arms shipments to Russia pass through Turkey, a member of NATO since 1952. One of Test-Oruzhie’s business partners is the Turkish company Rec Dis Ticaret Ltd Sti. On April 1, 2023, this firm delivered 100 units of Turkish-made smoothbore hunting rifles to Russia at a total cost of $33,170.

While Turkey has not imposed an arms embargo on Russia, Turkish involvement in smuggling European rifles and pistols may breach EU sanctions. On Jan. 12, 2023, for example, Hunter-Ru received 10 Spanish Beretta Benelli Iberica carbines and 15 Portuguese Browning Viana SA carbines from Turkish firm Duzce Silah Sanayi Ve Ticaret Ltd.St.

More general data on firearms exports — focusing not on specific companies but on exporting and receiving countries — can be found in the UN Comtrade database. This database contains anonymized customs information that omits the country of origin, listing only the country dispatching the goods and the country receiving them. For example, if an Austrian weapons manufacturer sells rifles to country X, which then forwards them to Russia, Comtrade will record the shipment as originating from X and ending in Russia. But even this anonymized data reveals statistical anomalies.

One such case involves Tajikistan, which in recent years became one of the world’s largest recorded buyers of Austrian rifles, importing over 3,000 units in 2021 and approximately 2,000 in subsequent years. However, no publicly available sources indicate the existence of retail outlets in Tajikistan selling Steyr Mannlicher or other Austrian rifles. Kyrgyzstan represents another anomaly, going from zero Austrian rifles imported in 2021 to 748 units in 2023.