The United States has increased its share of world arms exports even more over the past five years, while Russia’s performance has deteriorated again. Such conclusions are contained in the report of the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which will be published on March 13. Russia is exporting fewer weapons, experts say, both because it needs them now and because the US is threatening its potential customers with sanctions.
On Monday, SIPRI will present a new report on the global arms trade (Kommersant has read the document in advance). It contains data for two five-year periods: 2013-2017 and 2018-2022. Russia in the second five-year period remains one of the largest arms exporters, but continues to lose market share to competitors.
Compared to 2013-2017, its share for the period from 2018 to 2022 decreased by 6% – from 22% to 16%.
This can be called a trend: compared to 2008–2012, Russia’s share in the global arms market in 2013–2017 also decreased by 4% (see Kommersant dated March 12, 2018). Total – minus 10% of the market in ten years.
The United States remains the leader in arms sales, having managed, on the contrary, to improve its performance. According to SIPRI estimates, US arms exports increased by 14% over the past five years (compared to the previous one), and today 40% of world arms exports are accounted for by the United States.
The top five arms exporters, in addition to the United States and Russia, include France, China and Germany. Between 2018 and 2022, these countries accounted for 76% of global arms sales. In total, according to SIPRI estimates, 63 countries export weapons in the world.
The top five arms importers are India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia and China. In 2018-2022, these countries accounted for 36% of global arms purchases. 167 states bought weapons. And although European countries were not included in the top 5 importers, according to SIPRI, Europe as a region imported significantly more weapons (47%) over the past five years than in the previous five years. For European countries that are members of NATO, this figure is even higher – 65%.
A separate chapter in the report is dedicated to Ukraine. “Ukraine imported very few major weapons between independence in 1991 and the end of 2021. This changed after the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, when the United States and many European states began sending large amounts of military assistance to Ukraine, the document says. As a result, in 2022 it became the third largest importer of major weapons after Qatar India, and was also ranked 14th in the 2018-2022 Arms Importers Ranking.
The report emphasizes that the current figures do not yet fully reflect the effect of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, as, for example, European states continue to increase orders for arms supplies.
The war will have significant implications for future relations between arms exporters and importers on a global scale,” the review says.
The key importers of Russian weapons in the period from 2018 to 2022 were India (31%), China (23%) and Egypt (9.3%). In total, Russia over the past five years, according to SIPRI estimates, has sold arms to 47 countries. Experts from the Stockholm Institute predict that in the coming years the number of buyers of Russian weapons and equipment, as well as sales volumes, will decrease. The top three importers will also change: India has already begun to order less from Russia than in 2013-2017, China is increasing its own production of basic types of weapons, and Egypt, as the report says, in 2022, due to US pressure, canceled a large order for military aircraft. The document does not specify what kind of aircraft they are talking about, but, apparently, about the Su-35 fighters, which Egypt contracted in 2018. At the same time, on Saturday it became known that Iran intends to buy a batch of Su-35s from Russia.
“The low volume of pending deliveries of major arms from Russia — combat aircraft and helicopters, warships, anti-aircraft missile systems, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery — indicates that its arms exports are likely to continue to decline in the coming years,”— noted in the document. As the authors of the report recall, combat aircraft and helicopters have been among the main items of Russian arms exports since 1992. In 2018-2022, Russia delivered a total of 328 of them abroad, which accounted for 40% of Russian arms exports during this period. However, as of the end of 2022, according to SIPRI, only 84 Russian combat aircraft and helicopters were expected to be delivered. According to SIPRI experts, the conflict in Ukraine “is likely to impose additional restrictions on Russia’s ability to export weapons, since it will apparently prioritize the production of weapons for its armed forces, rather than for export.”
They also cite a second factor that could negatively affect arms exports from Russia: “Multilateral sanctions, including wide-ranging trade restrictions imposed against Russia, coupled with pressure from the United States and its allies on states interested in acquiring Russian weapons, will also prevent Russia’s efforts to export arms.
It should be noted, however, that not all information about Russian arms contracts is published, and SIPRI statistics are formed solely on the basis of data from open sources.
According to the director of the Russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, the publisher of the Arms Export magazine, Ruslan Pukhov, Russia’s share in the global arms trade market is indeed falling. “Moreover, both relative and absolute,” the expert clarifies. The main beneficiaries of the warming up of the arms market against the backdrop of the conflict over Ukraine are, according to him, the Americans, and to a lesser extent the Europeans: France, Italy, Belgium, Poland. “And the so-called new suppliers, Turkey and South Korea, heated up very strongly, especially in percentage terms,” he notes.
Ruslan Pukhov agrees with the two reasons cited by SIPRI for why Russia’s share of the arms market is declining. The first is the sharply increased needs of Russia itself in arms and equipment against the backdrop of the operation in Ukraine. The second is the unprecedented US sanctions pressure on Russia and on potential buyers of Russian weapons. At the same time, he cites a third reason that could have a negative impact on the export of Russian arms – Russia’s image loss. “Unlike the situation with Georgia in 2008 or Syria in 2015, now Russia looks, if not weak, then definitely not cool, which negatively affects the preferences of buyers in a number of countries,” the expert clarifies.
The TASS agency, citing the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSVTS), reported on February 24 that Russia supplies military products to more than 50 countries. “In general, despite attempts to pressure and discredit, the demand for Russian military products is not decreasing, the portfolio of orders is at a fairly high level, which indicates the stability and effectiveness of the military-technical cooperation system of the Russian Federation,” the FSMTC told reporters.
According to TASS interlocutors in the department, “Western sanctions complicated the terms of cooperation, but did not stop it.” “In addition, we have been working for quite a long time in the conditions of anti-Russian hysteria and the tightening of the sanctions regime, and therefore the domestic military-technical cooperation system has adapted to all new manifestations of unfair competition,” the FSMTC assured. At the same time, they added that “a special military operation has increased the interest of foreign customers in certain types of military products that are used by the Russian armed forces.”
