Germany continues to sell industrial goods to Russia, including machines for manufacturing vehicle and aircraft parts and ammunition, according to the Tagesschau news portal, which reported on an investigation conducted by broadcaster SWR.
Putin needs a constant supply of military equipment, and due to the sanctions imposed on Russia blocking imports, large parts of Russian industry have been transformed to cater to a war economy, producing military equipment, ammunition and spare parts as required.
However, products from German mechanical engineering companies also continue to help out, with more than 300 machine deliveries for manufacturing everything from vehicle parts to ammunition made in Russia in 2023, often via Turkey, SWR research indicates.
SWR was able to identify more than 30 German manufacturers whose machines were imported to Russia last year, many of them based in Baden-Württemberg, a traditional location for mechanical engineering. In around two-thirds of the cases, the machines were imported to Russia via Turkey. Some Turkish middlemen involved have direct connections to Russia, while other companies there facilitating the shipments were founded by Russian entrepreneurs.
Videos and photos obtained by SWR prove just how extensively German machines are used by Russian military suppliers, including by Russian companies Parsek, Kamaz, NIR and Industrial Solutions.
Most of the deliveries involved large industrial machines or so-called CNC machines, computer-controlled equipment that enables automated manufacturing. These machines can cut steel, weld parts, and perform other functions for the production of defense equipment, such as vehicle/aircraft parts and ammunition.
Olena Yurchenko ,from the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, claims that 80 percent of CNC machines in Russia are now used in military production: “With computer-aided CNC machines, they can produce much faster and more precisely, which is extremely important, especially in the weapons sector. This ultimately enables them to produce even more deadly weapons. And Germany is the market leader in the production of these machines, with a share of up to 30 percent in Russia,” she told the portal.
