It follows after a new investigation revealed how Russia is using Belarus and Kazakhstan to circumvent Western sanctions (Picture: Getty)
Russian forces appear to be using British-made components in drones used to attack Ukraine.
Ukrainian ex-colonel Andriy Kulchytskyi at the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise has shown The Sun the motor of an Iranian-made Shahed-M drone, used by Russian forces, which appears to be engraved with English writing.
Kulchytskyi said it is a widely shared suspicion at the institute that some of the engines used to power these drones are manufactured in England, even if the manufacturer was unaware of their end-use in a war-zone.
He said: ‘We thought the Shahed 131 engines were British, at the very beginning, but we haven’t made it official. England is a good friend.’
It follows after a recent investigation exposed how Russia is likely using ‘false transit’ schemes via Kazakhstan and Belarus to evade international sanctions and preserve the inflow of high-tech foreign goods.
Earlier reports have stipulated the engines for the drones have been reverse-engineered in Iran from British parts, but the English-language engraving on the drones examined by Kulchytskyi would appear to call this into doubt.
Speaking with the newspaper, former Minister for the Armed Forces Mark Francois said: ‘That these engines came from Britain is still unconfirmed but, if true, that’s a deeply worrying development.
The Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise has also uncovered Irish, US, Swiss and Canadian components from other Russian UAVs used to attack Ukraine (Picture: Anadolu)
‘We have to assume our own intelligence agencies are investigating this, with a view to intervening rapidly, if required.’
It’s not the first evidence of Western-manufactured goods being used by Russia’s war machine uncovered by the Kyiv lab.
Irish-built parts, as well as US and Swiss computer chips and Canadian antennae have all been retrieved from Russian-piloted drones in recent months.
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Last August, The Insider revealed how tens of millions of dollars worth of microchips produced by two US tech giants, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices, were transported into the Russian federations over a nine-month period in 2022.
The publication exposed how such devices are crucial to Russian missile and satellite communications systems, which have been used in the Kremlin’s war effort to attack Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
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