Some of the equipment was recovered on battlefields in Ukraine, US Justice Department said, and other nuclear proliferation technology was intercepted in Latvia before it could be shipped to Russia.
The five defendants charged in New York are all Russian nationals, two of the five have been arrested. A separate smuggling case in Connecticut involved three Latvians and one Ukrainian, all were taken into custody months ago at the request of U.S. authorities.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions Wednesday against one of the men charged by the Justice Department, designating Yury Orekhov and two of his firms, Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH and Opus Energy Trading LLC, for procuring advanced semiconductors and microprocessors used in fighter aircraft and ballistic and hypersonic missile systems among other military uses.
Orekhov and the firms ultimately sent the materials to Russian end-users, including companies designated by various federal agencies, in violation of U.S. export controls.
Russia is reliant on foreign production machinery and ongoing banking sanctions have undercut the Kremlin’s ability to obtain financing for importing military equipment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.