{"id":13710,"date":"2026-05-01T13:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/13710\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:46:08","slug":"china-now-supplies-90-of-russias-sanctioned-tech-imports-bloomberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/13710\/","title":{"rendered":"China Now Supplies 90% of Russia\u2019s Sanctioned Tech Imports \u2013 Bloomberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s dependence on China for sanctioned technology imports has risen to 90%, Bloomberg reported<\/a> Friday, citing people familiar with official statistics.<\/p>\n

The increase from roughly 80% a year earlier comes despite Kremlin efforts to promote import substitution and achieve what President Vladimir Putin has called \u201ctechnological sovereignty,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

Sources told Bloomberg that tougher European Union sanctions had further restricted Russia\u2019s remaining channels for acquiring Western technology directly.<\/p>\n

The figures highlight how more than four years of Western sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine have reshaped Russia\u2019s trade flows, pushing the country deeper into China\u2019s economic orbit and increasing Beijing\u2019s leverage over Moscow.<\/p>\n

EU officials are well aware of China\u2019s role in supplying Russia with dual-use technologies and even satellite intelligence used in the war effort, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

However, European governments remain reluctant to impose major sanctions on Beijing for fear of economic retaliation.<\/p>\n

The break with the West has turned Russia into \u201cChina\u2019s vassal,\u201d Elina Ribakova, an economist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.,\u00a0told<\/a> Deutsche Welle last February.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is the biggest trade partner by far whereas Russia is a very small share of where China exports,\u201d she added. \u201cFor Russia, it’s overwhelmingly now the largest trade partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Russia\u2019s Gaidar Institute, China purchased 27% of all Russian exports last year and supplied 36% of Russia\u2019s imports.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Russia\u2019s share of Chinese exports fell from 3.2% to 2.7%, roughly comparable to Mexico\u2019s share and more than five times smaller than that of the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is a big country but it doesn\u2019t have the capacity to be self-sufficient,\u201d\u00a0Zsolt Darvas, a senior fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, told Deutsche Welle. \u201cSo, it must obtain these products from somewhere else. And increasingly, that\u2019s China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ribakova said China has also helped Russia obtain Western-made goods indirectly, particularly dual-use products that can serve both civilian and military purposes.<\/p>\n

Trade between Russia and China declined<\/a> in 2025 for the first time since the start of the war, falling 6.5% to 1.63 trillion yuan ($234 billion), according to Chinese customs data cited in the report.<\/p>\n

Chinese exports to Russia fell 3.4% year-on-year, while Russian exports to China dropped 9.9%.<\/p>\n

The slowdown in bilateral trade drew concern in the Kremlin, Reuters reported<\/a> last August, citing sources close to the Russian government.<\/p>\n

According to those sources, Putin planned to ask Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Russian leader\u2019s visit to Beijing not to allow trade volumes to decline further because Russia\u2019s economy had become critically dependent on them.<\/p>\n

Read this article in Russian at The Moscow Times’ Russian service.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s dependence on China for sanctioned technology imports has risen to 90%, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[183,309,5,227,290,334],"class_list":{"0":"post-13710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-sanctions","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-trade"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}