AT this week's "Army 2024" defence fair on the outskirts of Moscow, dozens of Russian arms firms showcased their latest military equipment, telling visitors from across Asia, Africa and beyond that Russia's combat experience during the invasion of Ukraine now makes their products amongst the most battle-tested in the world.
According to a March report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russian arms exports to foreign nations dropped by 52 per cent between 2022 and 2023, largely as a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Since then, Russia's defence industry has been largely focused on domestic military production to support operations in Ukraine, a massive effort to build new missiles, drones and shells and recondition ageing Soviet-era tanks, vehicles and artillery to replace massive Russian losses.
Western and Ukrainian officials acknowledge the Kremlin has done better than anyone expected when it comes to the battle to produce military equipment, helped by increasingly sophisticated and multi-level partnerships with Iran, North Korea and China – but hindered by increasingly stringent Western sanctions covering a growing number of industrial and other components.
Iran's Shaheed drones – now jointly manufactured within Russia – continue to pound Ukraine most days, as do artillery shells supplied by North Korea. China appears to have held back so far from supplying lethal weaponry but has become by far Russia's most vital source for non-lethal components from microchips to spares for Soviet-era armoured vehicles.
An August report by the Economic Security Council of Ukraine says that as Russia struggles to retool and refit its shattered military and the industry that supports it, it has become almost completely dependent on China for critical Computer Numerical Control (CNC) systems.
According to the report, many of the components within those systems – controlling the fine movements of machine tools such as lathes in precision manufacturing, including the building of high-tech drones, rockets and other weapons – continue to originate in the US, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, South Korea and other Western nations.
At the start of the war in February 2022, Russia's defence industry was almost entirely dependent on such imports. In its immediate aftermath and the sanctions that followed, a host of new Russian-linked firms appear to have been set up in multiple jurisdictions in what appears to have been a concerted effort to find new ways to reacquire that technology and get it into Russian hands.
That work appears to be now bearing at least some fruit. At the start of June, Russian armaments company Kalashnikov Concern – makers of the original AK-47 assault rifle, now also active in a host of other areas including unmanned drones – announced it had successfully acquired 32 CNC machines to support weapons manufacture at an undisclosed location within Russia.
The firm did not reveal the origin of the machines, although its website shows that Kalashnikov itself now sells "Swiss-style" CNC modules to other Russian and foreign clients. But it did make it clear that the acquisition had been underway since 2022, and would be used to meet rapidly rising demand linked to the "special military operation" or SMO – the official Russian description for the Ukraine invasion.
"The demand for our products is growing every year," Kalashnikov quoted its managing director Andrey Baryshnikov as saying. "Our products have proven to be highly effective in the SMO zone. The main goal of acquiring new equipment is to ensure that we have the production capacity necessary to meet the needs of national defence."
Most major Western and allied producers of subsystems – and the report lists several dozen – stopped selling to Russia in 2022 as a result of Western sanctions imposed after the invasion. In February, the US, European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom added CNC systems to their jointly produced "list of common high priority items to further weaken Russia's war effort".
Despite those sanctions, however, the Economic Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU) says companies have often kept working with Chinese subsidiaries or partner firms that import or produce licensed versions of their products within China itself – and those firms then ship that technology to Russia.
Just over 900 days into the war, the ESCU estimates that roughly two-thirds of Russia's heavy industrial equipment, including the machine tools and control systems the Kremlin needs to produce its weapons, are worn out and on the brink of failure. Russia simply lacks the capability to build those systems itself, leaving it dependent on shipments from outside.
According to the report, 90 per cent of machine tools now coming into Russia originate from China – and 70 per cent of the Russian firms receiving them have military ties. Despite that, 90 per cent of the Chinese firms involved in such trade remain entirely unsanctioned.
Ukraine now wants the US and its allies to force their manufacturers to keep much closer tabs on the technology they export – as well as ideally pressure Chinese companies to do less work with Russia.
There is a precedent for the first – in recent year, the US has pushed hard to limit the export of the most sophisticated microchips – particularly those that can be used in artificial intelligence – to both China and Russia, albeit with only limited success.
If anything, however, the sophistication of efforts by both Beijing and Moscow to circumvent such sanctions continues to rise – with both governments willing to pay increasing amounts for anything they believe might give them critical advantage in any future conflict.
Largely unintentionally, Western efforts to stop that have had the growing effect of pushing Russia and China ever closer – and while Russia remains dependent on Beijing for multiple components and increasingly investment, China has its own dependency on Russia including for jet engines for its military aircraft.
Pointedly, Russia's "Army 2024" exhibition this week included China, Iran and Belarus as well as India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attempted to walk a line by continuing to collaborate with Russia on defence and energy while also embracing connections with the US, Japan and Australia to bolster India against Beijing.
In that kind of overlapping world, stopping technology transfer can be difficult if not impossible – the US and European allies have their own issues with being able to build sophisticated weaponry without using Chinese-made materials. By next summer, Russia may have run down its entire Soviet-era military stocks, and that may further boost its demand for industrial technology.
How aggressively the US and allies can cut Russia off from such supplies – even at a cost to their own manufacturers and exporters – may well be seen as a yet another test of will for a new era of international confrontation.
But it will not be easy, and Russia's manufacturers almost certainly believe that if they pay enough, they can retain access to the systems and technologies they want.
* The writer is from Reuters