Russia's Tech Independence Dream Meets Chinese Reality

Russia's most advanced cruise missile, the Kh-101, contains more than 50 different foreign-made components. Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, and Intel chips power what should be Moscow's most sovereign weapon. Four years after Western sanctions, this technological paradox defines Russia's struggle for independence.

The Self-Sufficiency Mirage

An internal Russian economy ministry document obtained by the Financial Times reveals the stark reality behind Moscow's technological ambitions. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine severed Russia from global supply chains, the country has made little progress toward the tech independence that Vladimir Putin desperately seeks.

The assessment shows Russia remains critically dependent on imports in sectors vital to its war effort: machinery, drone manufacturing, and energy production. Efforts to expand non-energy exports and build sustainable production infrastructure have stalled entirely.

Yet the government projects a dramatic transformation by 2030, when Putin's current presidential term ends. The six-year plan promises to meet import substitution targets across critical industries. Experts who reviewed the document called these projections "wildly optimistic."

Alexandra Prokopenko from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center puts it bluntly: "What really jumps out is when you compare the targets for 2030 to the figures for 2024. These are key technologies for the war and self-sufficiency, and they are enormously dependent on imports."

The Chinese Substitution

Sanctions haven't eliminated Russia's foreign dependence—they've simply redirected it eastward. In 2023, China supplied 90% of Russia's imported microelectronics, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. What was once Western technological integration has become Chinese technological dependence.

The drone industry illustrates this shift perfectly. Ukrainian analysis of Russia's new Delta military drone in mid-2025 found every critical component—control motors, cameras, antennas, video transmitters, ignition modules, engines, batteries, processors, sensors, and controllers—was Chinese-made.

Civil aviation tells a similar story. Russian airlines now rely on smuggling networks to obtain Western aircraft parts, while returning mothballed planes to service. The MC-21 passenger jet, designed to showcase Russian aerospace independence, only began prototype testing in 2025 after years of delays caused by the loss of Western suppliers.

Numbers Don't Add Up

The government's targets reveal the gap between ambition and reality. Russian software usage in key sectors is supposed to jump from 46% in 2024 to 80% by 2030. Research and development spending should more than double to 2% of GDP. Non-energy exports are projected to increase by two-thirds.

Heli Simola, a senior economist at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies, calls these goals "unrealistic." She notes that "for many goals, they already have had to abandon requirements because there are no domestic alternatives. In some cases, Chinese goods are simply labeled as Russian to achieve the targets."

Even Putin seems frustrated with progress. In December, he complained that officials had yet to fully assess Russia's "technological sovereignty" and urged them to "move faster" toward "technological leadership."

The Labeling Game

Perhaps most telling is how Russia plans to achieve these targets. Rather than genuine technological breakthroughs, the strategy increasingly relies on creative accounting. Chinese components receive Russian labels, joint ventures mask foreign dependence, and bureaucratic sleight of hand transforms imports into domestic production.

This approach might satisfy statistical targets, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem: Russia's technological ecosystem remains vulnerable to external pressure, whether from Western sanctions or Chinese supply decisions.