As part of its ongoing campaign to backfire on U.S. punitive trade measures and sanctions, China is imposing new and expanded export restrictions that will negatively impact Ukraine and its military efforts.
Ukraine’s armed forces have long relied heavily on drone warfare, but Beijing is now limiting key components that are important in the production of unmanned vehicles, Bloomberg reports Monday.
“Chinese manufacturers recently began restricting sales of key components used to build unmanned aerial vehicles to the U.S. and Europe, according to several people aware of the developments who asked not to be identified by discussing sensitive information,” the report says.
“These moves are a prelude to the broader export restrictions on drone parts that Western officials expect from Beijing in the new year, people said,” he continues. “These rules, according to one person, could be in the form of approval of licenses based on the intended use of components or in the form of less stringent requirements for Chinese companies to notify the government of their shipping plans.”
Sources further described that “Chinese manufacturers of engines, batteries and air traffic controllers have limited the quantities supplied or stopped shipments altogether” as part of the Beijing-Washington-for-tat conflict over trade policy.
This stems from recent months of Chinese retaliatory measures targeting U.S. companies supplying the Pentagon. These companies are increasingly seeing access to vital components manufactured in China.
Russia is able to sit back and capitalize on these U.S.-China tensions after literally carrying out hundreds of drone strikes from Ukraine over the past nearly three years of war.
Ukrainian drones have been quite effective, in some cases damaging oil and energy storage facilities in Russia, naval assets in Sevastopol, as well as air bases in different parts of Russia.
There have even been reports that Ukrainian drones were in the hands of Syrian jihadist rebels who had just taken over Syria. Increasingly sophisticated small drones were used against the Syrian army in recent months, which helped reduce its effectiveness and morale, and this contributed to its collapse.
But without parts of China, the Western drone arsenal could suffer from temporary production pauses and be rejected to some extent.
