The Myanmar junta uses imported aircraft to attack its civilian population. Its fleet includes Russian MiG-29, Yak-130, and Su-30SME jets; Chinese K-8/K-8W and FTC-2000G jets and Y-8 transport aircraft; and jointly built Chinese-Pakistani JF-17 fighters. Photo courtesy of Military Watch Magazine.

The September 28 airstrike on a market in Kyauktaw, an Arakan Army (AA) stronghold in Rakhine State, killed 50 people and wounded 58, according to aid workers at the scene. The AA reported 49 dead and 58 wounded, including 22 in critical condition.

The Burmese military manufactures none of its combat aircraft and has limited capacity to refine aviation fuel. To sustain its bombing campaign, it relies on jets from Russia and China, fuel from Iran, and parts and financing routed through Southeast Asia.

Iran has become the junta’s main supplier of both jet fuel and urea, a fertilizer the military uses to manufacture munitions. From October 2024 through December 2025, tankers in Iran’s shadow fleet delivered nine shipments of jet fuel to Burma’s military, totaling roughly 175,000 tons.

A January Reuters investigation found that the fuel supplied a bombing campaign that struck more than 1,000 civilian locations over those 15 months. Reuters estimated that Iran could have earned about $123 million from the shipments.

A second Reuters report, published October 26, detailed how the junta concealed these purchases. In December 2025, the U.S.-sanctioned tanker Reef reached Burmese waters carrying about 113,000 barrels of Iranian jet fuel falsely declared as South African diesel. Burmese broker Dynamic Wave had signed a $15.8 million contract with Thailand’s Tawan-Oil Trading for the cargo. Yet United Nations trade data and shipping analytics firm Vortexa recorded no diesel trade between South Africa and Burma in 2025.

An earlier contract, signed in May 2025, covered 202,000 barrels also labeled South African diesel and directed a $26 million payment to Tawan’s account at Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank. Deliveries of Iranian jet fuel continued into 2026.

Justice For Myanmar (JFM), an activist research group, released leaked import records the same day as the October Reuters report. The records document fraudulent paperwork for six cargoes totaling more than 843,000 barrels and valued at $109.5 million between December 2024 and November 2025. These records cover a period within the Reuters investigation’s timeframe; the figures should not be treated as additional shipments without establishing whether the cargoes overlap.

The actual buyer identified in the leaked records was National Energy Prime Aviation Services (NEPAS), a joint venture between the junta-controlled Myanma Petrochemical Enterprise and the privately owned Asia Sun group. Neither NEPAS nor Myanma Petrochemical Enterprise has been sanctioned by any government. Nyo Saw, who chairs the junta committee that approved the falsified import permits, has been sanctioned only by the European Union and Canada. Canada is also the only country that bans aviation fuel exports to Burma.

The fuel has a direct cost in lives. The UN Human Rights Office’s 2025 annual update recorded at least 982 civilians killed in junta airstrikes that year, including 232 children. The death toll was more than 50 percent higher than in 2024.

Russia supplies most of the aircraft. According to The Irrawaddy, the junta’s air force operates Russian MiG-29 fighters, Yak-130 light attack jets and Su-30SME fighters. It has reportedly used Yak-130s and MiG-29s to attack residential areas.

Military photos from a March 12, 2026, ceremony at Meiktila airbase showed four new fighter jets, including two Russian Su-30s. Beyond aircraft deliveries, the two countries also held a joint exercise, TIGER-2026, in Naypyitaw in July. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing met Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18.

China is the second major supplier. A 2023 UN report by the Special Rapporteur on Burma found that, between the February 2021 coup and December 2022, the junta imported $406 million in arms and related goods from Russia and $267 million from China. Much of that equipment came from state-owned companies. China’s Foreign Ministry rejected the report, calling it a smear against normal arms trade between sovereign countries.

In 2024, the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) supplied eight more aircraft: one K-8 light attack jet, six FTC-2000G light combat jets and one Y-8 transport. The FTC-2000G can carry up to three tons of missiles, rockets or bombs and costs $8.5 million per aircraft. Burmese arms dealer Dr. Naing Htut Aung, director of Gateways Hong Kong, brokered the purchase.

Burma also ordered 16 JF-17 fighters, jointly built by China and Pakistan, in 2016 at $25 million each. However, most of those delivered were later grounded because of structural cracks and other defects.

In the days after the market strike, video showed two aircraft over the Kyauktaw area. Open-source investigators at Myanmar Witness reviewed the footage. Their full report says a weapons specialist identified one aircraft as consistent with a Russian Yak-130 and the other with a Chinese-Pakistani JF-17. Based on the audio, the specialist concluded that each aircraft released at least one munition. The footage concerns subsequent flights, rather than the September 28 market strike.

The junta also relies on foreign suppliers for spare parts and maintenance. A JFM Malaysia investigation, published October 7, found that Malaysian company FJ Global had sought quotes from international suppliers for parts for the junta’s K-8W light attack jets, Russian Orlan-10E drones, and Kamov Ka-28, Mi-17 and Mi-2 helicopters.

In February 2026, FJ Global received financing from Perbadanan Usahawan Nasional Berhad (PUNB), a state-backed company wholly owned by a foundation chaired by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Malaysia also hosted Min Aung Hlaing on an official visit in October.

The United States already has the legal tools to target the fuel supply chain. In August 2023, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a sector determination authorizing sanctions against anyone operating in Burma’s jet fuel sector.

The Trump administration, however, has opened direct talks with the junta. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Vance met Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyitaw on September 15 and 16, following an earlier meeting in Tokyo in June. The talks have focused on shutting down scam centers that target Americans and could expand to rare earth minerals.

In October, Theint Win Htet became the fifth junta-linked businessperson to be removed from U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration. Those removed include arms brokers.

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