NYT reveals how Russia gets Japanese technology into its weapons: a secret GRU unit, an Aeroflot cover job, and a cargo route through Sri Lanka

Russian weapons keep turning up with Japanese-made components inside. The manufacturers maintain that they export no sensitive technology to Russia. But there is no shortage of middlemen willing to move the parts to third countries, from which they find their way into Russia. The New York Times spoke with current and former officials at five Western intelligence agencies and found that a classified unit, the GRU’s 20th Directorate, is responsible for acquiring such technology in Japan — and that the operation is run by a career officer, Maksim Filchenkov, working undercover as an employee of Aeroflot’s Tokyo office. Meduza recaps the key findings from the report.

Japan is the world’s largest exporter of the sensitive dual-use technology the Kremlin is seeking, The New York Times reports, citing shipping records. No direct pipeline is needed; the goods only have to pass through countries willing to sell them onward. Vietnam, for one, is the largest destination for Japan’s sensitive technology and, in turn, the largest exporter of it to Russia.

The classified 20th Directorate of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is responsible for acquiring weapons-related technology in Japan, the Times reports. Almost nothing about it is publicly known. But the paper’s sources say that it existed before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and that, since February 2022, it has been central to arranging shipments of military technology to Russia.

In Tokyo, the operation is run by Maksim Filchenkov, 49, who took up the post in February 2024 and works undercover as an employee of Aeroflot’s local office.

The Insider, an independent Russian investigative outlet, confirms that Filchenkov is a career GRU officer. He was once registered at a dormitory for Military Diplomatic Academy students, at the same address once used by Anatoly Chepiga. Chepiga, who goes by the alias Ruslan Boshirov, is accused by British authorities of poisoning the former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Filchenkov’s car, the outlet’s reporters said, was regularly parked outside GRU headquarters.

Agentstvo, another independent Russian outlet, points to Filchenkov’s possible ties to Russian intelligence through an analysis of leaked data. He has been listed as an Aeroflot employee since at least 2015 and has held the post of deputy head of operations at the representative office since 2024. He has flown to Japan repeatedly since 2016.

GRU officers have used Aeroflot jobs as cover since the Soviet era — a declassified 1985 U.S. intelligence report says as much. The airline’s Tokyo office, the Times notes, is a 10-minute walk from Japan’s National Police Agency, which investigates espionage.

Aeroflot itself is not under sanctions in Japan, but its operations there have effectively been suspended: it cannot obtain the parts and services it needs. Those constraints do not extend to Aeroflot’s official partners.

One of them, Proco Air, bills itself as a “bridge between Japan and Russia.” It books cargo space on flights to countries where Aeroflot still operates — Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, for example — and Aeroflot carries the cargo on to Russia. On paper, there is nothing illegal about the arrangement: a long list of goods may still be shipped to Russia.

Proco Air’s owner, Takehiko Miki, agreed to speak with New York Times reporters. He said he met Filchenkov around 2018 but did not start working with him in earnest until 2024. Miki said he did not know of his business partner’s ties to the GRU, and he denied helping to transport prohibited goods to Russia.

In 2025, though, Miki approached a business contact in China whom Filchenkov had introduced him to. Two people with knowledge of the episode told the reporters that Miki asked outright for help shipping prohibited cargo to Russia.

Miki said Proco Air delivers only “medical equipment and a small amount of cosmetics” to Russia. As proof, he showed the reporters an air waybill — but first tried to use a pen to black out the names of the companies in the supply chain. The redaction failed: the document still identified the recipient of the equipment as the Russian pharmaceutical company R-Pharm.

R-Pharm’s founder and former owner, Alexei Repik, has been described as a friend of Vladimir Putin’s daughter. He has reportedly helped Russian authorities evade sanctions; he was involved in shipping premium European wine into Russia, for example. The Insider has also reported that R-Stroy, a company Repik owns, is one of the main developers in occupied Mariupol.

Repik has been sanctioned by Australia, Britain, and Canada — but not Japan — over his extensive ties to Putin. R-Pharm is not under sanctions. Proco Air has not been charged with any wrongdoing, and Miki said Japanese authorities have never contacted him about his shipments to Russia.

Ukraine has warned Japan repeatedly about the smuggling of Japanese technology into Russia, the Times reports. In April 2025 alone, it sent at least eight formal diplomatic letters to Japan’s Foreign Ministry and about as many again over the rest of the year. The letters laid out evidence that components made by Japan’s biggest companies — NEC, Panasonic, Toshiba, and others — were turning up in Russian weapons.

All the companies denied wrongdoing and said they were committed to complying with Japan’s sanctions and trade restrictions. NEC added that the components Ukraine found were old and had not been sold by the company in years. The documents the reporters reviewed contain no evidence that the companies knowingly sold their products to Russia, as opposed to shipping them to other countries, where they were resold.

Western governments have also warned Tokyo about the GRU’s efforts to acquire Japanese technology. Two sources confirmed that Japanese authorities were given information about a network of companies helping to ship sanctioned goods to Russia. Proco Air was among them.

The Japanese government has been slow to respond, in part because the country has no foreign intelligence agency. Such an agency is only now being established.

Times reporters went to the Aeroflot office in Tokyo three times in early 2026. The entrance, they write, looks like a prison cell door. Inside, filing cabinets crowd the room, and the blinds are drawn. They never managed to catch Filchenkov there. Instead, the reporters were met by a “middle-aged woman with a Russian Orthodox cross around her neck,” who seemed to be alone in the office.

Filchenkov ignored reporters’ emails and Telegram messages. On their last visit, they asked the woman to call him. She did, and after a brief conversation in Russian, she told them Filchenkov did not want to talk.