The price of sanctions: Russia's military-industrial complex is losing its position in the global market

The most recent data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is given in his blog by network analyst Andrey Nalgin. It turns out that Russia is losing its once leading position even in such a seemingly successful area as the arms trade. At the end of 2019, only two Russian companies were among the 25 leaders in this area, and they accounted for only 3.9% of all global sales. Moreover, this market is now experiencing an upturn, in the last year alone it grew by 8.5%, which is equivalent to $ 361 billion. The analyst recalls that three companies from Russia were in the top 25 a year ago, and their share was 8.6%.

If we go to the specifics, the Almaz-Antey company, which produces, among other things, the S-300, S-400, S-500 missile launchers and the Buk air defense system, lost 2% of sales over the year, rolling back 15th position in the rating, and its total revenue was $ 9.47 billion - and this is the largest developer of air and missile defense systems in the country.

The United Shipbuilding Corporation also lost 4% of its revenue, dropping to 25th, last place and selling weapons worth $ 4.5 billion.

However, the situation is even worse in the Russian aircraft industry: the United Aircraft Corporation recorded a drop in sales last year by $ 1.3 billion at once, which is 23%, and generally flew out of the rating! As a result, in comparison with 2017, the sales of the largest Russian companies in this area fell by 35%...

Foreign experts do not doubt that this state of affairs was primarily influenced by the American sanctions, since all these companies are exactly the persons involved in the sanctions lists - a fact that greatly complicates the ability to trade weapons in foreign markets for Western currencies - dollars or euros. So much so that you have to find workarounds, using settlements in the currencies of the buying countries or even barter, as is the case with Indonesia.

Domestic experts, of course, unanimously deny these facts, accusing SIPRI of underestimating the results. This is very funny, because when the Swedish analysts talked about the growth of our sales, everyone was happy and agreed, and none of the Russian experts remembered the Swedes with an unkind word. It is also interesting that the US State Department published data according to which America blocked at the beginning of 2019 20% of Rosoboronexport's transactions worth $ 3 billion.

Credit trading is no better. In 2018 alone, Rosoboronexport missed $ 13 billion for the weapons already supplied, which is slightly less than the annual volume of Russian arms exports. Moreover, this part of this money came under sanctions already being transferred to banks, and it is unlikely that it will be possible to get it out of there.

But even if we take these circumstances into account, the export of domestic weapons has stopped growing since the first year of sanctions - since 2014, and remains within the range of 13-15 billion dollars. You can't write off this as humiliation - here you need to admit your own geopolitical mistakes, the analyst is sure. So far, we see how the object of Russian pride before the whole world - the domestic military-industrial complex ceases to be such.