In a recent editorial by The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, entitled “Russian Drone Parts, Made in China,” the editors make the point that “Trump hasn’t been able to stop Xi Jinping’s support for Putin.” The Sept. 1 editorial accuses Trump of not doing enough to limit Chinese purchases of Russian fossil fuels and chides him for failing to take action against “Chinese suppliers [who] provide components and machinery that let Russia produce its own arms.”¹ Even pro-Kremlin Russian media acknowledges that Chinese drones, operated by Russian personnel, have been zipping around the battlefield, snooping on Ukrainian soldiers and dropping bombs on them.² But what the WSJ editorial doesn’t ask is whose war machines are also powered by Chinese drones and components? Who supplies Ukraine’s drones? And, for that matter, who provides the components for America’s own drones? 

If you answered “China” to each of the previous questions, you would be correct. Although Western partners have certainly sent their fair share of domestically produced drones to Ukraine, (Shield AI, AeroVironment and Anduril systems, to name a few), they make up only a sliver of the millions of drones used by Ukraine each year. But while Ukraine’s drone assembly lines may be buzzing, the industry is hardly self-reliant. With only 5% of Ukrainian defense firms reporting they do not use Chinese components in their systems, the vast majority of drones that fill the sky are likely either made in China or contain a number of key components made in China. A more accurate way to describe these so-called “domestically produced” Ukrainian drones, therefore, would be “made in China, assembled in Ukraine.” 

As early as March 2023, NPR reported on Ukrainian forces acquiring and modifying large numbers of Chinese DJI commercial drones. In October 2024, Estonia’s ERR news outlet published an article on the reliability of Chinese-made drones and parts used by “both Russian and Ukrainian forces,” with one Ukrainian soldier commenting on the decreasing rate of defective products as compared to “a few years ago,” implying that Ukrainian soldiers had been using the Chinese products for some time. 

Indeed, while the presence of Chinese drones in Ukraine’s arsenal have fallen off following Chinese export bans late in 2024, it is hard to assemble a drone anywhere in the world that doesn’t use some Chinese parts. A recent piece from Forbes illustrates this point: “Silicon Valley’s Military Drones Have a Serious Made-In-China Problem.” Despite efforts to shore up supply chains both domestically in the U.S. and among U.S. allies and partners, today “China currently controls close to 90% of the global commercial drone market and manufactures most of the key hardware used to build them.” 

Although some may laud Ukraine’s efforts to get around Chinese shipping restrictions and build up a domestic drone manufacturing base of its own, the idea of a “fully indigenous home-made Ukrainian drone” is an exaggeration at best. Even analysts highlighting Ukraine’s fledgling domestic drone manufacturing base admit that “some of the electronic chips that make up devices may in fact come from China.” Ukraine may have stopped flying DJI quadcopters, but given China’s dominance in drone manufacturing, it’s likely that most air frames, batteries, cameras, motors, radios and cameras used in the “domestically-manufactured” Ukrainian drones were made in a Chinese factory. 

Footnotes:

1. While the WSJ editors do not mention drones explicitly in the body of their editorial, they do so in the headline and sub heading (“Russian Drone Parts, Made in China. Trump hasn’t been able to stop Xi Jinping’s support for Putin.”) This reference gives the author sufficient grounds to focus his critique on drones.
2. See, for instance, “China Halts Direct Mavic Drone Exports to Ukraine, but Supplies Continue via Middlemen,” Lenta.ru, June 5, 2025 (in Russian). This article reports that Chinese-made Mavic drones have been used by both warring sides. 

Quinn Urich is a research assistant with the Avoiding Great Power War Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. Photo by AP Photo/Andrii Marienko.