China Blocking Drone Supplies Crucial To Ukraine As US Trade Conflict Escalates

As part of its ongoing campaign to hit back at US punitive trade actions and sanctions, China is pushing new and extended export restrictions which negatively impacts Ukraine and its war effort.

Drone warfare has long been heavily relied upon by the Ukraine armed forces, but Beijing is now restricting key components vital in the production of unmanned vehicles, Bloomberg reports Monday.

“Manufacturers in China recently began limiting sales to the US and Europe of key components used to build unmanned aerial vehicles, according to multiple people with knowledge of the developments, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information,” the report says.

“The moves are a prelude to broader export restrictions on drone parts that western officials expect Beijing to enforce in the new year, the people said,” it continues. “Those rules could take the form of license approvals based on the intended use of the components or softer requirements for Chinese companies to notify the government of their shipment plans, according to one of the people.”

Sources further described that “Chinese producers of motors, batteries and flight controllers have capped the quantities they deliver or stopped shipments altogether” as part of the ratcheting Beijing-Washington tit-for-tat conflict on trade policy.

This comes in the context of recent months of Chinese retaliatory sanctions targeting US firms which supply the Pentagon. Increasingly these firms are seeing access to vital Chinese-produced components.

Russia is able to sit back and benefit from these US-China tensions, after it has been subject of literally hundreds of drone attacks out of Ukraine over the past nearly three years of war.

Ukrainian drones have been quite effective in damaging in some instances oil and energy depots in Russia, naval assets in Sevastopol, as well as airbases in various parts of Russia.

It may look made in someone’s garage, but these Ukrainian volunteers have built a drone capable of carrying different payloads of up to 25 kg. It is recovered by parachute, and can bomb, scout, or surveil. pic.twitter.com/4xZTc8myiH

— Roy (@GrandpaRoy2) April 7, 2024

There have even been reports that Ukrainian drones were in the hands of the Syrian jihadist insurgents which just took over Syria. Increasingly sophisticated small drones were used over the past months against the Syrian Army, helping to erode its effectiveness and morale, and this contributed to its collapse. 

But without Chinese parts, the West’s drone arsenal could suffer temporary production pauses, and be set back to a degree.