Russia cannot produce Granat-4 UAVs due to EU sanctions: Ukrainian hackers find evidence
The found documents show that European sanctions are disrupting the Russian Defense Ministry’s state contract for the supply of the Granat-4 UAV system, which was signed in June 2013 with NPO Izhevsk Unmanned Systems LLC.
The contract expires on 15.12.2023, but it is already known that it will not be fulfilled due to the inability to supply components from EU countries.
This was reported by the InformNapalm community, which obtained the data with the help of hackers from the Cyber Resistance group.
Russia is making large-scale efforts at the state level to provide its army with an uninterrupted supply of drones. In addition, the occupying country creates the appearance that sanctions do not interfere with this process, and that “import substitution” successfully circumvents sanctions pressure.
In particular, the official website sanctions.nazk.gov.ua reports that NPO Izhevsk Unmanned Systems LLC is subject to sanctions imposed by the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Ukraine.
Since the company continues to operate and even entire shopping centers are being vacated for its expansion, taking away retail space from entrepreneurs in Izhevsk, it may seem that it is successfully overcoming sanctions restrictions. But the real state of affairs turned out to be quite different, according to classified documents.
InformNapalm analysts managed to find interesting correspondence regarding government contracts of the Russian Defense Ministry among the array of documents exclusively obtained from the hackers of the Cyber Resistance team. It states that it is impossible to fulfill the state contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (signed on 06.06.2023, No. 2323187940521412466233133) for the manufacture and supply of a complex with unmanned aerial vehicles “Granat-4” equipped with a gyro-stabilized optoelectronic targeting and surveillance system.
The official letter goes on to provide a list of sanctions restrictions that prevent Izhevsk Unmanned Systems LLC from purchasing components in the European Union and fulfilling the contract. And the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Udmurt Republic responds that these circumstances may be grounds for changing the terms of the contract or terminating it.
“The sanctions slow down the Russian military-industrial complex and effectively prevent the rapid increase in the supply of weapons and advanced technologies to the Russian army, which is waging an aggressive and occupation war against Ukraine. However, Russia is constantly looking for new ways to circumvent the sanctions, which requires constant monitoring and the introduction of new effective restrictions by the US, EU and other countries,” InformNapalm analysts say.
