Behind Russia’s battlefield drone surge in Ukraine? Chinese factories.
Chinese sales of fiber-optic cable and lithium-ion batteries to Russian drone makers surged over the summer, underscoring Beijing’s “no limits” ties with Moscow.
China has materially helped Russia gain a key battlefield advantage in its grinding war against Ukraine, dramatically increasing exports over the summer of key components needed to make the fiber-optic drones that have enabled Moscow to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses on the front lines.
The sharp increase in exports of fiber-optic cables and lithium-ion batteries, among other drone components, reveals how the close partnerships between Russian and Chinese manufacturers are helping Moscow gain a pivotal advantage in the conflict, analysts say.
“It’s critical, it’s crucial,” Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of China’s support for Russia’s front line advancement. “Chinese play a big role here because this is where they are happy and ready to adjust their production lines.”
Beijing claims it is neutral in the conflict and Chinese manufacturers, which account for 80 percent of the global commercial drone market, have reduced their direct exports of ready-made drones to Russia.
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But official Chinese trade data shows that Beijing has allowed a sharp increase in the components that are enabling Russian manufacturers to build fiber-optic drones, which are operated through superthin cables of glass, the kind traditionally used for high-speed internet, that unspool mid flight for distances of12 miles or more. These drones are increasingly used by Moscow because they are less susceptible to interception.
“They’re difficult to defend against,” said Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “And they can do a significant amount of damage.”
Chinese shipments of fiber-optic cables to Russia grew almost 10-fold between July and August, after hitting record highs in May and then again in June, according to the data from China’s customs office. Exports of lithium-ion batteries, likely used to power the drones, also shot up over the summer as Russia stepped up its aerial assault on Ukraine.
In a war that has become dominated by these aerial assaults, Ukraine has been scrambling to catch up. Russia has steadily increased its use of fiber-optic drones since they helped force Ukraine’s retreat from Russia’s western Kursk region earlier this year.
Even though the cables occasionally tangle, fiber-optic drones have a major advantage over other, untethered drones because they cannot be disrupted by radio signal jamming systems and are therefore often able to avoid electronic warfare interference. Most radio-controlled first-person view (FPV) drones, which are untethered and easier to intercept, can be fitted with a cable by replacing parts of the controller and radio transceiver.
Despite the “no limits” friendship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has not sent military hardware to help Moscow’s fight, and last year said it would restrict exports of drones and drone parts with military applications.
But a Washington Post review of shipping records, trade data, drone supply chains and statements from companies found that Chinese commercial drone makers have been instrumental in helping Russian drone manufacturers scale up production and are now helping to develop components with explicit battlefield applications.
Data from China’s customs administration show that China exported record lengths of fiber-optic cables to Russia in May and June — 119,000 and 130,000 miles respectively — before a massive spike to 328,000 miles in August. It has also continued supplying Ukraine, but with a fraction of the cable: It sold only 72 miles of cables to Ukraine in August,the latest data available.
China has been restricting access to parts and technology for Ukraine and its supporters while “opening up the floodgates for components for Russian drones,” said Mick Ryan, a senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Sydney.
China’s strength in producing large quantities of components at cheap prices — and also rapidly coming up with new prototypes and technologies — give Russia a significant advantage over Ukraine, Ryan said.
This is having significant implications on the battlefield as lighter and longer cables have allowed Russia to expand its range of attacks further into Ukraine-controlled territory. Local authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk — about 12 miles from the front line — reported their first fiber-optic drone attack on Oct. 5.
Workers install nets to protect against Russian FPV drone attacks, near Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
“If you look how the front line changes, [Russia takes] territory by chunks that equal the distance fiber optic drones can fly,” said Bondar of CSIS. Russia is using these drones to destroy Ukrainian logistics lines, command centers and jamming equipment behind the front line before launching an attack, she said.
The high value of the shipments compared to their weight recorded in official data since late 2024 suggested Russian buyers have been importing military grade cables, said Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, another Washington think tank, who has been tracking the rise in exports.
At the same time, China’s exports of lithium-ion batteries to Russia also rose sharply over the summer to a record $54 million in June before dipping slightly to $47 million in August.
These batteries were most likely used in drone production, Webster said, because Russia doesn’t make much in the way of electric vehicle or electronics, the other main uses of this technology.
Exports of lithium-ion batteries to Ukraine, meanwhile, tracked at only $11-12 million a month over the same period.
NATO leaders in July called China a “decisive enabler” of Putin’s war against Ukraine, and the European Union has repeatedly urged China “not to provide any material support which sustains Russia’s military-industrial base.”
The U.S. and E.U. have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russian and Chinese companies, but this has done little to slow the flow of items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes — like these cables and batteries.
European leaders are growing increasingly concerned about Beijing’s selective implementation of its own export controls that require companies to get approval before shipping motors, sensors and other drone components with military applications abroad.
European leaders want China to “use its influence and leverage over Russia to facilitate a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, but [they] think China is not doing enough,” said Daniel Balazs, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Instead, Russia’s rapidly expanding industry of domestic drone manufacturers has relied on Chinese suppliers as they as have scaled up production.
Since 2023, at least 140 drone manufacturers and another 60 entities that supply parts, resell drones or train operators have been registered in Russia, independent media outlet the Insider reported in May.
One of Russia’s largest manufacturers, Rustakt LLC, imported $577 million in parts that included motors, batteries and electrical control panels from China between July 2023 and December last year, according to shipment data from Sayari, a Washington-based economic risk intelligence firm.
Since the E.U. imposed sanctions on Rustakt in December, there have been no publicly recorded Chinese shipments to the company, thanks in part to the increasing difficulty of obtaining Russian import and export data.
But those restrictions did not extend to its main Chinese suppliers.
The Russian company’s two main suppliers — lithium-ion battery maker Shenzhen Huaxin Energy and drone manufacturer Nasmin Technology owned by Shenzhen Kiosk Electric — did not respond to requests for comment.
Lesser known manufacturers like these make up the majority of China’s drone part supply chain and have stepped up to meet Russian demand after DJI, the world’s largest commercial drones maker, halted direct sales to Ukraine and Russia in 2022.
While the ban has not prevented modified DJI drones — including fiber-optic drones — from finding their way onto the battlefield, analysts say it has created an opening for smaller Chinese firms to sell drone parts and equipment directly to military-linked Russian manufacturers or to help them establish factories in China.
Russian drone maker ASFPV LLC, which is also known as PGI Technologies, features pictures on its website of its factories in China that produce fiber-optic drones and reels of cabling alongside letters from the Russian military expressing interest in buying scanners for detecting drones from the company.
St. Petersburg-based company Stribog offers turnkey machines for winding fiber optic cables for $2,200.
Photos of its production facility featured on the website homepage show Chinese staff and machinery in Chinese language. One Sept. 24 blog post boasted of a newly developed 0.28mm fiber optic cable spool weighing under four pounds with a range of 12 miles — designed, the company said, by its Chinese engineers.
Neither company responded to requests for comment.
