Russia’s arms sales could go to zero over Ukraine

Asia Times ^ | March 8, 2022 | Stephen Bryen

[SunkenCiv]

The poor performance of Russian equipment deployed in the Ukraine war is bound to be giving global buyers second thoughts.

How can it be that a large Russian army attacking force, capable of causing untold destruction, is being checkmated and systematically devastated by Ukraine’s military, in particular its special forces?

And what impact will this have on the Russian army and its industrial backbone, the Russian companies that build the tanks, armored personnel carriers, mobile air defenses and aircraft including fixed-wing and helicopters ­– all of which have suffered extreme losses in the conflict?

Russia’s exports consist of various commodities, most prominently wheat, oil and gas, and armaments. Before the Ukraine war, Russian arms sales were doing brisk business with an order book running at around $55 billion.

Russia was able to offer capable weapons at a considerable discount over Western companies jousting for the same market and, in some cases, systems that outmatched the competition, such as the Russia-made S-400 air defense system.

But now, with Russian armor, fighter jets, helicopters and mobile air defense systems being blasted by Ukrainian fighters for the world to see, a once rosy sales outlook for Moscow’s arms builders is looking grim.

Interestingly, Russia was able to avoid blame for the crushing defeat of Armenia’s forces (equipped by Russia) by the hybrid forces in Azerbaijan (equipped by Russia, Israel and Turkey).

The key to the Nagorno-Karabakh war was the impact of armed drones and Israeli loitering munitions that zeroed in on enemy air defenses, radars and missile launchers, and crushed them.

One would have thought, given what the Russians surely should have learned from Nagorno-Karabakh, they would have recognized the need to have defenses against drones and loitering munitions in their invasion forces in Ukraine.

[SunkenCiv]

If they said that, it was a lie.