The Soviet Union supplied Marxist revolutionaries and Third World dictatorships with military hardware for decades as part of its long struggle against the capitalist West. But, 10 months after it sent tanks across the border into Ukraine, the Kremlin is facing challenges — both technical and commercial — to its once all-powerful weapons industry that it hasn’t encountered since the Cold War.
Even after the fall of the USSR, arms sales remain a central element of Russia’s foreign policy. It is consistently ranked as the world’s second-largest arms exporter, behind only the United States.
Moscow exports arms to more than 45 countries and has accounted for about 20% of global arms sales since 2016, according to the Congressional Research Service.