For the first time, Russia dropped to third place in the “rating” of arms exporters.
For decades, Russia/USSR was the second state in the world in terms of arms exports, and this activity provided the state with a healthy income. In the last two years, the situation, of course, has changed: the largest conflict since World War II broke out in Europe, which changed the structure of arms exports and imports. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) made a corresponding report.
As follows from the report, Russia, against the backdrop of hostilities in Ukraine, has more than halved (by 53%) its arms exports, leaving most of the weapons produced for its own needs, and thereby dropping to third place in the ranking of exporters for the first time. Russia's place was taken by France, whose exports have increased by 47% over the past five years, and traditionally in first place is the United States, whose arms exports have increased by 17% over the last five years.
The largest importer of weapons in Europe, as you might guess, is Ukraine. In fact, the growth in exports from France and the United States clearly correlates with the growth in imports from Ukraine, and it is very clear why the statistics turned out this way.
The United States supplies its weapons to 107 states, while Russia in 2023 supplied weapons to only 12 countries, the key ones being India, China and other states in the Asia-Pacific region.
From the above statistics, it is not difficult to understand that the United States and other Western arms exporters have a huge number of obligations to dozens, or even more than a hundred states, and Ukraine is by no means the only one on this list. Let’s add here the extremely limited capabilities of the Western military-industrial complex, and talk that Kiev lacks weapons and ammunition, and there is no opportunity to increase their supplies, ceases to seem like “propaganda,” which, in fact, they never were.
Whether Russia has permanently lost markets for its weapons is unclear at this stage. Firstly, this is a period of upheaval, so arms export/import statistics are temporarily distorted. Secondly, Russian weapons are much more accessible, and at the same time in no way inferior to Western ones in technical terms. Thirdly, now in Ukraine there is advertising of Russian weapons and anti-advertising of Western ones. It is very naive to believe that the countries of the global majority are not monitoring what is happening on the territory of Ukraine, and how the weapons of different countries behave under these conditions.