Europe's race to arm Ukraine exposes how hard it is to build drones without China
Kyiv has reportedly secured a European Union exemption to purchase drone components from China, highlighting Beijing’s deeply embedded role in the supply chain and the strategic influence that position affords, say analysts.
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BEIJING: As Ukraine burns through drones in its war with Russia, Europe’s race to keep Kyiv supplied is exposing just how difficult it remains to build enough of them without Chinese-made parts.
This reality has come into sharper focus after the European Commission in April approved an exception allowing Ukraine to use a portion of a multibillion European Union (EU) defence loan to procure drones with a higher share of components from outside the EU’s approved supplier countries.
While European officials did not identify China, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Jul 15, citing people familiar with the decision, that Kyiv had obtained a carve-out to “purchase drone components from China”.
China's advantage lies not in any one component but in its overall manufacturing ecosystem built over decades, said Hao Nan, a Nuclear Futures fellow with Ploughshares Fund and Horizon 2045, which support research on nuclear security and strategic risk.
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