Russia arms exports rebounded to pre-war levels of more than $15bn in 2025, supplying military equipment to over 30 countries despite sweeping Western sanctions, President Vladimir Putin said.

Speaking at a meeting of the Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation in Moscow on January 30, Putin said export contracts had been “reliably fulfilled” despite mounting pressure from Western nations attempting to block Russia’s defence partnerships. The revenue would help modernise defence enterprises, expand production capacity and fund research programmes, he added.

If accurate, the figure would mark a rebound towards pre-war levels and provide a significant income stream for Russia’s defence industrial base. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russian large weapons exports fell 47% between 2022 and 2024. Comparing the 2015-19 period with 2020-24, exports declined 64%, with the downward trend beginning before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

By 2024, Russia had dropped to third place globally for arms exports behind the US and France, SIPRI data show.

Western analysts have questioned the credibility of Moscow’s figures. The Russian government claimed $13.75bn in exports for 2024, while some external estimates put the total billions of dollars lower. An analysis by the Jamestown Foundation suggested exports may have fallen from $14.6bn in 2021 to about $3bn in 2023, Defence News reports.

However, after Putin put the entire economy onto a war footing in the last year production has risen dramatically and Russia produced a surplus of weapons in 2025 and is starting the long process of rebuilding its military power that is expected to take more than decade.

All the main arms categories – tanks, military vehicles, artillery, and drones – have seen production increase by almost 200% or more since the war began in 2022. Before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it had planned to deliver about 400 armoured vehicles the following year. It’s now shipping ten-times that, according to the Kiel Institute.

For example, at the start of the war Russia was producing 1.7mn artillery shells a year; last year it produced 7mn shells. While there are still shortages and bottlenecks, Russia is now outproducing all of the European Nato and Ukraine combined. At the same time it has been innovating and producing a family of hypersonic missiles that are well ahead of anything in the US arsenal, amongst other weapons. While the war in Ukraine still consumes much of this production, there is now a surplus available for sale abroad – long a staple source of foreign exchange and political leverage amongst the Kremlin’s partners.

“Russia has dramatically scaled military output since late 2022, doubling or tripling production in most categories despite sanctions,” the Kiel Institute said in a recent report.

Russia stopped publicly disclosing detailed data on arms export contracts after February 2022, including reporting to relevant United Nations bodies, complicating independent verification.

Putin’s remarks coincided with comments from Alexander Mikheyev, chief executive of Rosoboronexport, the state arms export monopoly, who told the state news agency TASS that military-technical co-operation with African countries had reached levels last seen during the Soviet era and “surpassed it in some respects”. Rosoboronexport oversees more than 85% of Russia’s military exports and has concluded over 30,000 contracts with 122 countries since its establishment, with total exports exceeding $230bn. Its order book now exceeds $60bn, Mikheyev said on January 30.

The Kremlin has prioritised sales to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, regions not directly subject to Western restrictions. In addition, during the recent New Delhi meeting in December with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Putin signed a deal to sell its state of the art S-400 air defence missiles and agreed to jointly produce them in India, which wants them to protect its northern borders with Pakistan and China. Putin said more than 340 joint defence projects with 14 countries were under way or in development and announced additional state support measures for military exports covering 2026 to 2028.

Russia’s defence spending reached 7.3% of gross domestic product as of December 2025, according to official data, as the industry operates at wartime production levels to supply domestic demand.

 

Russian challenges US avionics 

One recent example where Russian military technology has caught up with that of the US is in avionics. 

Russia has developed and begun installing a domestically produced Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS), marking what officials present as a breakthrough in aviation import substitution.

Until recently, the global market for these critical avionics modules was dominated by a single supplier, Collins Aerospace, part of US defence contractor Raytheon Technologies. Russia, like other countries, relied on the American company for the systems, which are essential for preventing mid-air collisions and controlled flight into terrain.

Russian engineers have now produced an indigenous alternative, making Russia one of only two countries manufacturing the combined module. The system is being fitted to the Tu-214 and other aircraft and has entered serial production, replacing earlier reliance on imported components.

The development is portrayed by Moscow as evidence that its aviation industry can complete the full production cycle domestically, from airframe to key onboard electronics. It also reflects a broader push to localise supply chains following Western sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine, which restricted access to aerospace components.

Russian officials argue that establishing domestic production capacity for TCAS and TAWS removes a critical vulnerability in civil aviation and clears a path for scaling up output of Russian-built airliners.