German-made parts have been identified in Russian drones used to strike Ukrainian cities, according to a database maintained by Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR). German media in January reported that transistors from Bavarian semiconductor maker Infineon were recovered from a Geran-5 attack drone. HUR’s publicly available War and Sanctions portal lists foreign components found in Russian military equipment and shows many items originate in the US and China, while the “Made in Germany” category contains 137 distinct components.
More than half of those 137 German items were discovered in drones; the rest turned up in rockets, radar systems, vehicles and helicopters. Transistors are the most common German parts on the list—roughly 50 entries in one tally—and Infineon appears most frequently. HUR supplied DW with numerous examples of Infineon transistors recovered from Geran-series UAVs, which are based on Iranian Shahed designs. The transistors are tiny chips whose model and batch numbers are legible only under a microscope. HUR says each Geran control system generally contains eight to 12 German-made transistors. In August 2025 HUR’s deputy head Vadym Skibitskyi told Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne that Russia aimed to make 40,000 Geran-2 drones per year, which would require nearly half a million transistors if those plans were realised.
HUR and analysts say Russia has tried to cut dependence on Western suppliers, shifting some sourcing from the US toward China. Nevertheless, Russian manufacturers often prefer German-quality components over perceived lower-quality Chinese alternatives. Many of these parts are widely used in civilian electronics and remain accessible via legitimate distributors and secondary markets. For example, Infineon transistors are offered on online marketplaces such as eBay in small packs, and some sellers list dozens of units. Although many vendors state they will not ship directly to Russia, Belarus or Kazakhstan, parts can be rerouted through intermediary countries such as Georgia or China.
HUR suspects Moscow obtains German-made transistors through a mix of methods: orders placed in Germany via shell companies that disguise the true destination, smuggling or shipments routed through third countries, and procurement by dummy businesses within Germany that buy components and arrange illicit exports. Sanctions expert Viktor Winkler told DW that shipments routed through countries like Turkey, the UAE, China or Central Asian states have fallen since 2022, but an increase in direct channels using criminal dummy firms in Germany appears to be occurring. He described such deliveries as legally serious but relatively isolated compared with larger sanctions-evasion flows such as luxury goods and consumer items, while acknowledging that some cases reflect long-standing business ties with Russia.
DW contacted the German firms named by HUR; all said they do not supply Russia and that they comply with sanctions. Infineon said it stopped shipments to Russia in 2022 but noted that tracking a single product’s resale over its lifetime is difficult given the company’s huge annual output—about 30 billion chips—and that the firm closes accounts and cooperates with authorities when it has reliable evidence of illicit trade.
Rheinmetall said German customs informed it in January 2024 that civilian electrical fuel pumps produced for automotive spare parts in July 2020 had ended up in Russia; Rheinmetall said those were not deliveries it made and that it does not know who exported them, and that it is cooperating with investigators. Würth Elektronik said it cut business ties with Russia in 2022, uses strict export controls, warns customers that its components are not authorised for military use, and acknowledged the possibility some parts came from pre-sanctions stocks. Bosch said it no longer conducts operational business with Russia, that the specific fuel pump referenced on the HUR site is not a Bosch product and could be counterfeit, and that a push-button switch found in a Shahed-136 was a widely sold Bosch commodity (for example, an emergency-stop switch). Bosch noted parallel imports are routed through countries that have not imposed sanctions but that the company cannot reliably gauge their scale. TDK Electronics said it ceased deliveries to Russia after the war began, closed its Moscow sales office in 2023, follows EU sanctions, and includes contract clauses forbidding military use; it added that small orders via component distributors or private individuals can be hard to trace.
The HUR list and manufacturers’ replies illustrate persistent challenges in preventing sanctioned or sensitive components from reaching Russia: many parts are ubiquitous in civilian markets, supply chains are long and opaque, secondary markets exist, and actors can deliberately circumvent controls through shell companies and third-country routing. HUR continues to document and publish examples of foreign-made parts found in Russian military hardware.
This report was originally written in Russian.