Russia hunts microchips from buyer of UK factory
Welsh plant that makes semiconductors could be on Kremlin ‘shopping list’, warns Kyiv intelligence
RUSSIA is hunting for Western semiconductors built by the Chinese-backed owner of Welsh factory Newport Wafer Fab as it seeks to restock critical hi-tech components for its war machine.
Ukrainian intelligence has warned Vladimir Putin’s regime is desperately seeking chip technology built by European and American companies, Politico reported.
Parts on Russia’s “shopping list” are said to include microchips, diodes and transistors built by Dutch company Nexperia, which is owned by Chinese company Wingtech, according to a procurement document seen by Politico.
Other components on the list include chips made by US companies such as Texas Instruments and parts sourced from German and Taiwanese firms.
The Sunday Telegraph reported last month that components made by Nexperia had been discovered in a Russian missile recovered from the battlefield by researchers at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
The chip manufacturers are not accused of wrongdoing, but Moscow could try to access their technology through intermediaries or by recycling chips stripped from non-military technology. Nexperia bought Welsh chip plant Newport Wafer Fab last year, a deal which is currently subject to a national security investigation.
A Nexperia spokesman said none of the components identified by Politico is manufactured in the UK and said its components were not made for military use.
The spokesman said: “Nexperia utterly condemns Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, we support and have abided by all international sanctions. We have no Russian customers and do not sell into Russia.
“Unfortunately, like other chip companies, we have seen incidents of our products being used in military applications for which our chips were neither developed nor sold, including in Russia where we do not even do business.”
The spokesman said Nexperia would cease business with any customer it found to have violated sanctions.
Denys Shmyhal, the prime minister of Ukraine, told Politico that Moscow was running low on critical weapons and had just “four dozen” hypersonic missiles left in its arsenal.
He said: “These are the ones that have precision accuracy due to the microchips that they have. But because of sanctions imposed on Russia, the deliveries of this high-tech microchip equipment have stopped and they have no way of replenishing these stocks.”
Joe Byrne, a researcher at Rusi, said Western strategy was not to stop every black market shipment of chips, but to “raise the cost and slow procurement” and make it impossible to restock Russia’s war supplies with chips.