As the war in Ukraine consumes military resources at an unprecedented rate, Russia has found a way to resupply drone technology without touching any Western sanctions.
The key is a legal trade route that Bloomberg revealed, where drones leave Chinese factories, pass through Bangkok and reach the front without any customs being able to prevent them.
The mechanism works because Thailand does not require declaring the final use of drones when importing them. So there is no violation, there is no alert and there is no way to block it with current legislation.
An almost invisible company with a huge volume of drones
Skyhub Technologies, a company formally registered as a car rental service, operates in a building in the financial center of Bangkok.
His office was empty when Bloomberg came, there is no contact number in its registration documents and its only director appears sporadically.
However, customs records place it as the second largest importer of Chinese drones in the country, with purchases valued at more than 20 million euros in 2025 alone, the majority coming from Autel Robotics.
In 2022, drone trade between Bangkok and Moscow was practically non-existent, but three years later, the numbers reflect a radical transformation.
Between January and November 2025, Russia imported drones from Thailand worth more than 120 million euros, 88% of the country’s total exports in that sector.
In that same period, Chinese manufacturers sent drones to the Asian kingdom for more than 181 million euros. Both curves start in 2022 and rise in parallel, at the same rate as the war escalates.
The models that circulate on this route are not military prototypes. One of them is the Autel EVO Max 4T, a drone that is openly marketed for about 9,000 euros and is designed for mapping, infrastructure inspection or aerial photography.
In a war context, this same technology serves for reconnaissance, fire coordination or transportation of explosive material with minimal modifications.
FPV drones, cheaper and more abundant, are the most widespread in the Ukrainian trenches and are mainly of Chinese origin.
The US State Department estimates that Beijing supplies around 80% of the dual-use components used by the Russian militaryalthough the Chinese government denies any direct military involvement.
Sanctions that arrive late
The EU has sanctioned two Bangkok-based companies for their role in this chain. The United Kingdom did the same with China Thai Corp. in October 2025, a company that had imported more than €140 million worth of Chinese drones during that year.
The Thai authorities recognize the situation but claim that the law does not give them the tools to act.
The director general of Customs admits that trade is legal with current regulations and that the Ministry of Commerce is studying strengthening export controls, without a specific date.
It should be noted that Southeast Asia is the focus of attention today, but the scheme will continue to be replicated as long as there are legal gaps that no sanctioning regime can cover simultaneously.