Putin has turned to smuggling advanced processors into the country, using an Indian pharmaceutical company. Shreya Life Sciences has been exporting Dell servers to Russia, skilfully dodging US sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war.
Between April and August 2024, Shreya Life Sciences shipped 1,111 Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers to Russia, each brimming with Intel's 4th Generation Xeon Scalable CPUs and either AMD Instinct MI300X or Nvidia H100 processors. These systems, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, were dispatched to two Russian entities: Main Chain and I.S.
The shipments, though legal under Indian trade laws, began in September 2022 after sanctions had severed Russia's access to Western tech markets. To avoid detection, the servers had a lot of travelling to do.
They started in Malaysia, sourced by Dell's Indian subsidiary, before heading to Russia. Shipping documents for over 800 servers pinpointed Malaysia as their origin. Between March and August 2024, India imported 1,407 of these Dell servers from Malaysia.
Shreya's exports peaked in April 2024, with servers priced at an average of $260,000 each. These servers fall under HS code 847150, a category of dual-use goods restricted by the EU and US to thwart their use in Russian military efforts.
Main Chain, the main recipient of these exports, was established in Russia in January 2023 and is helmed by Anastasia Obukhova, who previously managed small tourism firms. Shreya Life Sciences, originally founded in Moscow in 1995 by Sujit Kumar Singh, initially peddled pharmaceuticals before branching into manufacturing.
In addition to $22 million in pharmaceutical exports from January 2022 to August 2024, Shreya started shipping restricted machines to Russia in September 2022. Their inaugural shipment, worth $755,333, was sent to Russian firm Lanprint, later sanctioned by the US in September 2023. Following sanctions on Lanprint and another client, Silkway Shreya redirected exports to Main Chain and I.S which remain off the US sanctions list.
Teaming up with another Indian firm, Hayers Infotech, Shreya has exported $434 million worth of high-tech goods to Russia since February 2022. This operation facilitates the flow of AI and HPC GPUs to Russia, defying international efforts to halt such exports.
These smuggling routes have put India under the Western spotlight, making it the second-largest supplier of restricted technology to Russia, trailing only China.
Despite repeated visits by US and EU officials to persuade India to stop these exports, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government remains steadfast, prioritising economic and military ties with Russia, especially with the lure of discounted Russian oil imports.
