Manufacturing has hit a wall due to a lack of semi-conductors. Thats why their army is pulling T-62s out of cold storage. They can't get the things needed to run modern tech. And they can't make the good stuff. They need to get that from somewhere else. Semi-conductor production basically breaks down as: low end for "smart" refrigerators comes out of China, mid-end SE Asia for cars, and top end US/Western.
They import 50% of their semiconductors from China. Actually, Russia can already make semiconductors and they have several companies manufacturing them. Now however they plan to scale up the production drastically, though their ambition still seems to remain low.
Russian Government's New Semiconductor Plan: Local 28nm by 2030
"The country's new chip plan involves a rather massive investment over the next eight years, the goals don't exactly sound ambitious. For example, while TSMC plans to hit 2nm by 2026, Russia wants 28nm local chip manufacturing by 2030."
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/russi ... -plan-28nm
And as WW mentioned about the Chinese 7nm chip.:
China is innovating in semiconductor chips, US sanctions or not. And furling a chip war
"TechInsights, an analyst firm that tracks tech trends, reported that China’s state-owned SMIC is shipping a 7nm MinerVa Bitcoin mining chip. The chip innovation has been called a ‘two-generation leap’ in semiconductor manufacturing."
https://theprint.in/opinion/eye-on-chin ... r/1056817/
For the sake of comparison, Samsung has recently started a mass production of 3nm chips.
And here's a long and interesting read, very well explaining Russia's situation:
The U.S. Can't Win the Battle Over Semiconductors Alone
https://www.hk-seventwo.com/news/59.html
Actually, I think that an even bigger problem for Russia right know is that they usually import more than 50% of high technology components from the EU. That's a lot of stuff to compensate.
They cannot do it on their own.
The BRICS and SCO consist of well over 50% of the World's population. Russia is certainly not as isolated as the media portray things here. But also and not to forget, In today's World, everyone relies on everyone else. No one can make anything by their own. Something that the USA and EU tend to forget.