Russia claims to be the world’s number-two defense equipment exporter, according to data released by President Vladimir Putin at the May 25 meeting of the country’s Commission on Military Technical Cooperation with Foreign States. According to the Russian government, the value of exports achieved by the country’s state-backed arms sales agency Rosoboronexport (Hall 2c Stand C198) in 2014 was more than $15.5 billion. Putin stated that this gives Russia 27 percent of the global market, behind the U.S. at 31 percent.
During 2014, Russian defense companies signed around $14 billion worth of new contracts, taking their total backlog to $50 billion. Among the country’s top export customers are India (28 percent), Iraq (11 percent), China (9 percent), Vietnam (7 percent) and Venezuela (6 percent). Russia delivered military equipment to 62 countries last year and has military technical cooperation ties with a total of 91 states.
Putin told the meeting that politically motivated attempts to block Russian defense exports constitute unfair competition, without being specific about particular cases of alleged interference. He claimed that Ukraine had been forced to break its long-established ties with the Russian industry in a way that had brought its own domestic industry to the point of bankruptcy.
In April, Rosoboronexport CEO Anatoly Isaykin told the Kommersant newspaper that, despite economic sanctions, Russia increased the value of its defense orders in 2014 by $22 million, reporting the breakdown of exports last year as being 41 percent for air forces, 27 percent for armies, 15 percent for air defense systems and 13 percent for navies. He, too, condemned Western sanctions against Russia as amounting to “unfair competition” and “petty tricks” that he said have become “more concentrated and cynical now.”
