James Byrne

Last month, a joint investigation by the FT and the Royal United Services Institute think-tank tracked a separate delivery of marine oil last year from South Korea’s south-east coast into North Korea’s exclusive economic zone. The investigation revealed that an unnamed Chinese shipping agent had brokered a deal between a South Korean company called Eastern Pec and a Shanghai-based company called Met Ocean Co to conduct a fuel transfer in the South China Sea....

James Byrne, the director of the open-source intelligence and analysis research group at Rusi, said "Russia has become dependent on the West for arms technology". "They cannot produce this technology or parts themselves, they can't get it anywhere else and so must acquire it from Europe and America through illicit networks."

For months RUSI, Altana — a company that is creating a searchable global supply chain database, and where one of us works — and others have documented how shadowy illicit networks continue to source sensitive microelectronics for Russia’s military-industrial complex despite a tightening web of trade restrictions. Fundamentally, they are able to do this due to a lack of supply chain visibility....