After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the U.S. and Europe imposed strict sanctions against the Russian government. But as Russian manufact
Simon Ostrovsky:
"The device seen in the background is a Niles-Simmons N30-MC turn and mill center. It's a machine tool that uses computer numerical control, or CNC, to automatically machine metal into almost any desired shape.
Uraltrac (Soviet tank manufacturer) uses the Niles-Simmons to create crankshafts needed for its various diesel tank engines. The company that makes the machine tool is called NSH and has its roots in the Upstate New York Simmons Machine Tool Corporation, which manufactures train wheel maintenance equipment used by many U.S. metro transit systems.
NSH USA Corp., as the company is now known, also supplies the U.S. Department of Defense and was awarded an $8.8 million defense contract from the U.S. army for the supply of CNC boring and milling machines last year.
Although the Niles-Simmons machine tools NSH's defense clients are interested in get made in Germany, it's 100 percent American-owned company, so it's subject to us export controls. They have got manufacturing facilities in Germany and in China, but also in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and here in Albany.
So how did a machine tool made by a company that got its start in the New York state capital end up on the floor of a factory owned by Russia's only tank manufacturer, Uralvagonzavod, which has been subject to U.S. sanctions since 2014?
The answer lies with this man, the German-born American chairman of NSH Group, Hans Naumann, who's been very vocal about his opposition to sanctions against Russia. [...]
[W]hen Donald Trump became president in 2017, Naumann told a German newspaper he'd voted for the Republican and supported his purported stance on Russia.
Hans Naumann (through interpreter):
I think that Trump, unlike many European politicians, has recognized that the white population must stand together. Americans, Europeans, Australians, they're roughly 1.5 billion people, but Asians come to six billion. In my opinion, the world's demographics compel the two nuclear powers, that's America and Russia, to stand together.
