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Why would they not want to buy US computers? Security would be a dumb answer, please tell me there is a better one.
The real driver is domestic industry protection and a forced pivot to Chinese suppliers — parallel imports were letting cheap Western hardware undercut Russian manufacturers that the state has spent billions trying to build.
Why it matters: Russia has sunk 187 billion rubles into IT import substitution since 2022 and generated only 1.6 billion rubles in revenue — those domestic brands can't survive if gray-market HP and Asus gear keeps flooding in at competitive prices.
- Parallel import volumes of Western goods already fell nearly 50% in 2025 as sanctions tightened on intermediary countries — the channel was collapsing anyway, so closing it formally costs less than it looks.
- China now supplies roughly 90% of Russia's sanctioned-tech imports; cutting off the Western parallel-import route channels remaining demand to Chinese brands like Lenovo and Huawei, deepening the bilateral economic relationship Russia needs.
- Russian officials explicitly said the goal is to 'increase demand for local radio-electronic products' — this is classic infant-industry protection, using import restrictions to force buyers toward domestic alternatives (Aquarius and others) that can't yet compete on price or quality.
- The gray-market route itself carried strategic risk: Russia was dependent on third-country middlemen who could be pressured by sanctions at any moment, so replacing that fragile supply chain with direct Chinese sourcing is more predictable.
Room for disagreement
- Russia's government (via TASS) claims domestic supply is sufficient and the change won't reduce consumer choice — independent analysts and industry buyers flatly contradict this, expecting fewer options and higher prices, with the 116x spend-to-revenue gap in domestic IT as the clearest evidence the domestic alternative isn't ready.
AI-generated with web search — may be wrong. Check the linked sources.
