Four months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, at a time when much of the world was pulling away from sensitive trade with Russia, the Chinese manufacturer Jiangsu Jingchuang Electronics Co. went deeper in.
As it would later recount in its prospectus, that was when Jingchuang established a business relationship with Kontakt AO, a military-linked Russian company. The two maintained that relationship as Western sanctions against Russia and its trade partners tightened, with just one apparent tweak: “Due to the impacts of the changing international political situation,” Jingchuang wrote last year, Kontakt was now buying through its “partner” in Kyrgyzstan.
The arrangement offers a glimpse into how Central Asian transshippers are helping China continue to supply Russia and—as Western leaders have increasingly warned—circumvent sanctions.
…
China is “the largest supplier of dual-use technology items that have enabled Russia to build and sustain its military operations in Ukraine,” the U.S.-China Commission wrote in a report last November. And Central Asian operators facilitate a major chunk of that trade.
The European Union in April singled out Kyrgyzstan as a key facilitator of Russia’s sanctions-circumventing trade, blocking member states from exporting to it certain sensitive tech. According to the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., Kyrgyzstan imports “from China for onward export to Russia” increased from $300 million in 2021 to more than $3 billion in 2023.
…