"Russia had been forced to repeatedly establish new supply chains for acquiring chips. As sanctions disrupted existing smuggling routes, it had set up new ones, likening these outcomes to a game of “whack-a-mole”, that was frustrating for both Western governments as well as “supply-chain managers at Russian missile and drone factories”.

The biggest failure in enforcing the controls is not that Russia continues to have some success in smuggling — that’s not a surprise — but that China continues shamelessly to sell Russia so much via normal trade routes."