Foreign manufacturers that produce processors for Russia according to the documentation provided by the country refused to supply ready-made chips in 2022. This was stated by the head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev during a meeting of the committees for control and information policy of the State Duma, Kommersant reports .
According to the minister, over the past months of 2022, 15,000 PCs and 8,000 servers on domestic processors were produced. This year, Russia could have had more if the batches of Russian Elbrus and Baikals, which were ordered from foreign companies, were delivered. He also acknowledged that "Russian" processors are completely made in foreign factories, since there are no such factories in the country:
“Intellectual rights and all documentation are Russian, but, based on topological standards, there are no such production facilities in Russia, and all this was ordered from foreign factories.”
The minister also promised that by 2028 Russia plans to establish its own production of processors.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, Baikal Electronics, JSC MCST (the developer of Russian Elbrus processors), and JSC SPC Elvis came under US export control, and then under sanctions, which implied the blocking of assets and a ban on transactions. Foreign manufacturers producing Baikal and Elbrus, due to sanctions, refused to fulfill orders from the Russian Federation, including shipping the manufactured chips.
In early February 2022, an expert who develops analog and power integrated circuits for the space industry told The Insider that state-owned enterprises in Russia are trying to transfer to the Russian Elbrus because of fear of sanctions and leaking data to unfriendly countries. According to him, the problem with the Russian processors "Elbrus" and Baikal is at least that it is unusual to work on them. Later, an engineer, a microchip developer in the aerospace industry , said in an interview with The Insider that after Taiwan stopped exporting chips with a clock frequency of more than 25 MHz, as well as equipment for their manufacture to Russia and Belarus, the export of everything modern would actually stop. So countries want to limit the use of chips for military purposes, even if they are not intended for this