German Parts Inside Russian Geran Drones Expose a Sanctions Evasion Problem That Criminal Networks Are Exploiting

Every Geran drone that Russia fires at a Ukrainian city carries between eight and 12 transistors made in Germany. That detail, confirmed by Ukraine’s military intelligence service HUR to Deutsche Welle, is not a rounding error or a quirk of pre-war stockpiles. It is a structural dependency — one that dummy companies inside Germany are now actively exploiting to keep the supply chain running, despite sanctions imposed in 2022.

• The Development: Ukraine’s HUR-run database “War and Sanctions” lists 137 German-made components found inside Russian military equipment, with more than half recovered from drones — sourced from companies including Infineon Technologies, Bosch, TDK Electronics, Würth Elektronik, and Rheinmetall subsidiary Pierburg.
• The Scale: Russia has stated a target of producing 40,000 Geran-2 drones per year. At 8–12 German transistors per airframe, hitting that target would require nearly half a million Infineon components annually — just for one drone model.
• The Mechanism: German sanctions expert Viktor Winkler told DW that indirect routing through third countries has decreased since 2022, and that his assessment is parts are increasingly arriving via criminal dummy companies operating inside Germany itself.
• The Source: Full reporting from Deutsche Welle, drawing on HUR data and manufacturer responses.

Infineon Technologies Is the Dominant German Supplier Found in Geran Drones

Of the 137 German components catalogued by Ukraine’s HUR, 58 trace back to Infineon Technologies, the Bavarian semiconductor company, with the vast majority being transistors installed directly into drone control systems. These are tiny microchips — model and batch numbers readable only under a microscope — that HUR analysts have been pulling from Geran wreckage across Ukraine.

Infineon stopped all deliveries to Russia in 2022. The company produces roughly 30 billion chips annually, and it says controlling how a specific part is resold years down the supply chain is genuinely difficult. That is not a cop-out — it describes a real structural problem with commodity electronics. When HUR provided DW with dozens of recovered transistor examples, the batch numbers confirmed these were authentic Infineon parts, not counterfeits.

For context: five Infineon transistors of the type found in Geran drones are listed on eBay right now for around $29.90. One merchant offers up to 45 units at a time. They don’t ship directly to Russia, Belarus, or Kazakhstan — but Georgia and China are not on that restriction list. That illustrates how available these parts are to anyone willing to route an order creatively, though bulk procurement at the scale Russia needs obviously runs through more opaque channels than a single eBay listing.

We’ve been tracking the Western electronics problem in Russian drones since the Geran-5 was first identified in January, and followed up with a deeper look at how Western chips power that specific platform. The HUR data DW now publishes fills in the German-specific dimension with hard numbers.

Winkler Believes Criminal Dummy Companies Inside Germany Are Replacing Third-Country Routing

Viktor Winkler, a German expert on sanctions policies, told DW that indirect routing through Turkey, the UAE, China, or Central Asian states has actually decreased since 2022. What he believes replaced it is more direct and more criminal: shell companies registered inside Germany that purchase components from legitimate manufacturers, then move them to Russia illegally. Winkler is clear this is his assessment, not a confirmed finding — but it aligns with what HUR is seeing on the ground.

“There may be a highly criminal direct relationship, with criminals supplying Russia with components from other companies,” Winkler told DW. “Other, similar cases have been characterized by business relationships with Russia that were planned long in advance.”

HUR’s own assessment points in the same direction. The agency believes Russia is primarily ordering Infineon transistors through dummy companies that conceal the real supply chain, with parts either smuggled directly or moved through Georgia and China as intermediary steps. Winkler characterizes the overall volume as “legally serious, but ultimately isolated incidents” compared to the broader scale of sanctions evasion — but isolated incidents become systemic when they’re potentially generating nearly half a million transistors a year for a single weapons program, if Russia meets its stated production targets.

Other German Manufacturers Confirm Parts Found — Bosch Points to Counterfeits

Every German company contacted by DW said it stopped supplying Russia and complies with EU sanctions. Their explanations for how parts ended up in Russian weapons vary, and not all are equally convincing.

Bosch confirmed that a push-button switch found in a Shahed-136 drone is a genuine Bosch product — described as a commodity emergency stop switch sold in large volumes. For the fuel pump attributed to the Geran-3, Bosch says that is not its product and may be a counterfeit. The company acknowledged parallel imports happen “without the manufacturer’s knowledge” from countries that haven’t imposed sanctions. Bosch’s own admission is telling: “The end use of our supplies is often unknown due to complex, multi-stage supply chains.”

Rheinmetall subsidiary Pierburg had a cleaner explanation. German customs authorities told Rheinmetall in January 2024 that civilian fuel pumps manufactured in July 2020 for the automotive aftermarket had reached Russia. Pre-sanction stock, exported by an unknown third party. Rheinmetall says it had no involvement and is cooperating with investigators.

TDK Electronics closed its Moscow sales office in 2023 and stopped deliveries when the war started. Its honest admission is worth noting: small orders from component distributors to private individuals or development labs “cannot be fully traced in terms of their final use.” Consumer electronics — washing machines, refrigerators, cars — can be legally imported into Russia, then stripped for parts and installed in weapons.

Würth Elektronik severed Russian business ties in 2022 but could not rule out Russia drawing on pre-sanctions stock it had delivered earlier.

Russia Is Reducing Western Dependence, But Not Fast Enough to Drop German Quality

Russia has been substituting Chinese components for American ones — a shift HUR tracks closely. In 2023, some Shahed-136 variants were up to 80% American-made by component count. That figure has since dropped, with Chinese parts now comprising up to 60% of some builds. China’s dual-track strategy of supplying both sides makes it the path of least resistance for Russia’s sourcing needs, and Chinese cable and battery exports to Russia dwarf what Ukraine receives.

German transistors are a different category. HUR told DW that Russian manufacturers are not rushing to replace Infineon parts with Chinese equivalents they consider lower quality. “Infineon transistors are used in many domestic appliances and utensils, and clearly they have no problem obtaining the quantities they need,” a HUR representative said. That is the core problem. These are not exotic military-grade components. They are commodity parts found in home appliances, which makes controlling their flow to Russia nearly impossible through standard export restriction mechanisms alone.

Russia’s production ambitions depend on that supply holding. Deputy Head of Ukrainian Military Intelligence Vadym Skibitskyi told Ukraine’s national broadcaster Suspilne in August 2025 that Russia aimed to produce 40,000 Geran-2 drones per year — the figure behind the transistor math. Russia is also recruiting 12,000 North Korean workers for its Shahed drone factory to hit volume targets, and Iran’s original blueprint gave Russia the mass-production model it couldn’t develop on its own. German transistors are the quiet ingredient keeping that production line moving.

DroneXL’s Take

What strikes me reading through the HUR component lists is the mundanity of it. These are not specialized military chips. They are transistors you can order on eBay this afternoon and have delivered to an address in Georgia by the end of the week. The sanctions framework was designed to stop state-level procurement, and it has largely done that. What it was not designed to stop — and cannot easily stop — is criminal-scale exploitation of civilian supply chains.

Winkler’s framing of “isolated incidents” is technically accurate but operationally wrong. If Russia hits its stated 40,000-drone target, that’s potentially half a million transistors per year for a single weapons program. That isn’t isolated. It’s a pipeline. And Winkler’s hypothesis that evasion is moving from third-country routing to dummy companies inside Germany itself is the most alarming detail in this report — precisely because it suggests the problem is getting closer to home, not further away.

The manufacturers aren’t lying when they say they can’t fully trace end use. Infineon makes 30 billion chips a year. No compliance program catches everything at that scale. But that can’t be the end of the conversation. The EU needs enforcement mechanisms that work at the distributor and reseller level — where the criminal companies actually operate — not just at the manufacturer export stage.

My expectation: within six months, at least one German dummy company tied to Russian drone procurement will face criminal charges under Germany’s Außenwirtschaftsgesetz — the Foreign Trade and Payments Act that governs sanctions enforcement. The public pressure from reports like DW’s, combined with HUR sharing specific batch numbers, gives German prosecutors usable evidence. Whether that translates into supply chain disruption at volume is a different question. The honest answer is probably not quickly enough to matter on the battlefield.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.