The joke that Trump will supply weapons to Russia seems like an exaggeration only now, – Khara

The talks between Russia and the US in Saudi Arabia are just the beginning on the path to ending the war.

It is believed that the meeting of US and Russian representatives in Saudi Arabia and their further plans regarding the bilateral track have given rise to a certain path to ending the war. In this regard, UNIAN spoke with expert Alexander Khara on the topic of what will happen to the Russian defense industry if in the future Russia’s military actions against Ukraine are stopped, given the separate negotiations between the US and Russia.

Let’s imagine that one day the war will end, although we don’t know when it will end. What will happen after the war with the Russian defense industry, which the Russians have greatly accelerated in terms of increasing the production of weapons?

They need to increase production of equipment and ammunition, since we have destroyed almost all Soviet reserves, that is, they will definitely not stop. Perhaps they will reduce defense spending, the military-industrial complex, because they have serious internal economic problems – both a shortage of labor for the civilian economy, and debts of enterprises – in fact, they print the ruble, that is, this affects inflation and worsens the general economic situation. This and a number of other structural economic problems.

And several scenarios can be considered.

First: normalization of relations with the United States begins, and they begin to lift sanctions and export restrictions. This means that other countries can supply Russia with components, technologies and materials that are currently only available in small quantities through third countries. Under such conditions, China will be less restrained in what it supplies to the Russian Federation. I am not talking about weapons, although that may also be there, but they will be able to increase supplies of machine tools, technologies and other things to Russia.

Of course, Trump’s plan is to pull Russia away from China, and there may be some sporadic actions to prevent China from receiving both economic benefits and maintaining a strategic connection with Moscow – they are not allies, but there is a rapprochement.

Someone on Twitter from the Americans joked that a little more and Trump himself will supply weapons to the Russian Federation. Now this looks like an exaggeration, but given the trend and desire of Trump to tear Russia away from China in order to create alliances in the Middle East and contain Iran, I would not rule out that something will be supplied from the States as well.

So, for us, the picture is not very favorable. I am sure that the Europeans will not do this. And we saw at the Munich Security Conference that the two shores of the Atlantic are diverging: supplying Russia with weapons is in fact handing the rope to the one who is going to hang you.

It is clear that Russians need production equipment, components and technologies in large quantities. They are using this time to prepare seriously, and not as it was in 2022.

How long might it take Russia to recover?

I don’t think even the CIA can calculate this. According to the Europeans, they need two to six years to build up their power potential and then attack a NATO member state. But this depends on many factors. If sanctions on energy resources are lifted, Russia will receive more petrodollars. The key partners are China and India, first of all. But the Europeans also buy Russian oil, mixed, and turn a blind eye to it.

Plus, they need some time to assess what was happening on the battlefield. How much it has changed. When they increased the number of drones and changed tactics – this is adaptation on the fly. And from the point of view of operational concepts, we need to realize this, create a new vision, focus on key components that enhance certain capabilities. We need to build everything – from conventional weapons to high-tech. It is absolutely clear that their electronic warfare systems and other innovations worked very well, and they will scale them up. They need air defense in large quantities, because Russia is a large country, and our almost daily drone strikes have shown that they are not able to cope with this, they cannot block the sky even for such imperfect means, I am not talking about cruise missiles. Therefore, it is difficult to say about time intervals here. Everything will depend on the parameters of the system.

How do you see the prospects for Russia in terms of producing missiles and drones – “Kalibr”, “Iskander”, “Shakhed”? Will production stop, remain at the current level or will it increase?

We have the same problem. We need large stockpiles so that at a certain time we can use them to perform certain tasks. Considering that most of these funds will be destroyed on the way to the target, they need a large array.

With missiles, they won’t be able to jump over their heads and come up with some new super weapons. Of course, there will be developments. But before that, they will need to restore the number of missiles that they spent on us, because this is not only our issue. This is a question of a constant threat to the Europeans. The Europeans’ air defense and missile defense systems will be developing well now. And accordingly, in order to penetrate them, a larger number of such things are needed.

Another issue is the modernization of nuclear potential: “Oreshnik” and some new “wunderwaffe” – they will also spend money there. They saw how we shoot down the same “Iskanders” and “Daggers”, which means they need to be improved and a large number of them are needed to be guaranteed to penetrate the European missile defense and have the ability to cause significant damage.

(C)UNIAN 2025