Since the outbreak of full-scale war, Russia has imported many Western-made optical sights worth 16 billion rubles ($126 million).
Source. Vazhnye Istory (Important Stories) reports this with reference to customs documents for 2022 and 2023.
According to the publication, despite the fact that these sights are officially intended "for installation on hunting weapons" and "not for military use," most of them end up at the front.
According to the newspaper, dozens of videos can be found on the Internet showing the Russian military using foreign-made scopes, such as those made by Leupold and Nightforce Optics.
The largest importers of such products are the online stores Pointer from St. Petersburg and Navigator from Moscow. According to the newspaper, they purchased, for example, about 52,000 scopes made by the American-Chinese manufacturer Holosun for more than 3.4 billion rubles ($27 million).
The journalists suggest that the sights' manufacturers are probably unaware that their products are used by the Russian army, as Pointer uses intermediaries in China and Navigator in Turkey and Kazakhstan.
Background. As a reminder, three Russians have been arrested in the United States and accused of supplying $10 million worth of American electronics to the Russian army.