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Key Points and Summary – A new analysis reveals a critical vulnerability in Russia’s war machine: its heavy reliance on imported cotton byproducts to manufacture gunpowder and explosives.
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With its own defense industry unable to meet demand, Moscow is sourcing vast quantities of cotton pulp from Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
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More critically, a significant loophole exists within NATO itself, with member state Turkey continuing to be a major exporter of nitrocellulose—a key gunpowder ingredient—to Russia.
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This creates an opportunity for the West to cripple Putin’s Ukraine war effort by disrupting this vital, yet fragile, supply chain.
Turkey Could Provide Critical Aid to End the Ukraine War
The White House seems to be changing its tune on Ukraine.
While initially skeptical of continuing American support, time and the intransigence of Russian President Vladimir Putin have progressively nudged President Trump over to Kyiv’s side.
On July 14th, Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to develop a new approach for arming Ukraine. In a sign of the times, the strategy now being considered by the White House does not involve the Administration directly selling weaponry to Ukraine. Rather, NATO member states would supply Ukraine with their own weapons, and the U.S. would then replace their depleted stocks. (In early August, the Trump administration took the first step in this direction, selling Europe some $1 billion-worth of arms.)
That, however, isn’t the sole approach available to NATO for deterring Russian expansionism. Another option is crippling the Kremlin’s warfighting capability, thereby making it increasingly difficult for the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue to prosecute its war of aggression.
Doing so requires many things, but among the most critical is denying Russia’s defense industry access to critical components used in the manufacture of ammunition. The Russian defense-industrial base is vulnerable in this regard, because it relies heavily on the import of cotton and its byproducts for such production. If NATO can disrupt this import stream, it can deal a major blow to Russian military logistics and the Kremlin’s larger Ukraine war effort.
According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project(OCCRP), Russian factories that specialize in the production of gunpowder, ammunition, and artillery have been importing cotton pulp and cotton cellulose from countries in Central Asia, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In 2023 alone, OCCRP found, Uzbek and Kazakh firms had exported more than $10 million-worth of cotton pulp directly to Russian defense factories. These Russian factories refine this imported cotton pulp into cotton cellulose, which they then chemically modify into nitrocellulose, a flammable cotton product used in gunpowder, explosives, and propellants.
Russian defense industries rely on nitrocellulose to produce small arms ammunition, artillery, and rocket fuel. According to statistics from the Jamestown Foundation, in 2023, Russian defense factories were able to use Central Asian supplies of cotton to produce roughly 14,591 tons of nitrocellulose. That supply, in turn, was used to manufacture 7,295 tons of gunpowder—facilitating a steady stream of ammunition and explosives for the Russian military to use in Ukraine.
Russia isn’t just creating nitrocellulose, however. It is also importing it. Fully twenty percent (3,009 of 14,591 total tons) of the chemical used by Russian factories in 2023 was procured abroad. To target this link, NATO has placed sanctions on such exports.
But loopholes remain – including within the Alliance itself. For instance, NATO member Turkey continues to conduct a significant nitrocellulose trade. Back in 2023, it is estimated to have exported over 1,800 tons of the chemical to Russia – accounting for 8.11% of the Kremlin’s overall supply that year. Since then, as the Treasury Department has noted, Turkish exports of nitrocellulose to Russian companies have persisted.
That trade is fundamentally at odds with Turkey’s Alliance commitments. At the bloc’s most recent summit in The Hague, NATO members collectively demanded “Russia stop the war immediately, cease its use of force against Ukraine, and completely and unconditionally withdraw all its forces from Ukraine.”
Ankara has a big role to play in achieving that outcome—provided NATO members pressure it to truly disrupt Russia’s ability to continue its war of choice against Ukraine.
About the Author: Joshua Harvey is a researcher at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
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