Yeah, this is what’s primarily happening. A third-party imports the chips to a random country for [perfectly valid use], then resells them to Russia at a markup. It’s one of the reasons you see more and more sanctions packages. Some of those are sanctioning perpetrators of industrial level sanctions evasion as described here.
And while you can never stop it, driving up the price and reducing supply to Russia is helpful. Particularly when paired with lethal aid to Ukraine.
Yeah, this is what’s primarily happening. A third-party imports the chips to a random country for [perfectly valid use], then resells them to Russia at a markup. It’s one of the reasons you see more and more sanctions packages. Some of those are sanctioning perpetrators of industrial level sanctions evasion as described here.
And while you can never stop it, driving up the price and reducing supply to Russia is helpful. Particularly when paired with lethal aid to Ukraine.
And modern high tech parts are actually pretty traceable. Everything has a serial number and a digital trail.
People compare sanctions to the War on (some) Drugs but really nobody grows custom CMOS chips in their basement