As the Kommersant newspaper reports in [...] Dmitry Sotak's article, "The initiative is provable. The Ministry of Defense will receive new powers to export weapons created outside the state order," the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has prepared a draft presidential decree that clarifies the rules for exporting weapons developed by enterprises outside the framework of the state order. The document is intended to eliminate the uncertainty that caused projects with export potential that were not in demand by the Russian army to be approved for six months or longer. However, the participation of the military department in this procedure actually negates the stated simplification, the expert believes.
One of the serial variants of the Prince Vandal Novgorodsky FPV drone developed by NPC Ushkuynik (Veliky Novgorod) (c) NPC Ushkuynik
The draft decree "On amendments to certain acts of the President of the Russian Federation" is posted on the portal of regulatory legal acts. It was prepared in pursuance of the instruction of the head of state dated May 25, 2025 on the removal of excessive restrictions in the field of military-technical cooperation.
The document deals with initiative developments - samples of weapons and military equipment, which enterprises of the military-industrial complex create at their own expense, without the participation of the state and with the expectation of export. Their official status has so far remained vague: formally, they fell under the current regulations, but there was no separate approval procedure for such projects.
According to the current procedure, the functions between departments in relation to such products were distributed as follows: the classification of products for military purposes was formally carried out by the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, while the examination of tactical and technical characteristics and other parameters of products was carried out by the Ministry of Defense. However, for developments without a government customer, this mechanism was not detailed, which led to protracted and often ambiguous approvals.
The draft decree assigns new powers to the Ministry of Defense, effectively concentrating key stages of expertise in this department.
The Ministry will coordinate the tactical and technical requirements for such samples, determine whether the products relate to weapons and military equipment, as well as give similar conclusions on technical documentation, from design to operational. Separately, the document clarifies the procedure for approving information on characteristics that can be disclosed to foreign customers.
This is not the first adjustment of the military-technical cooperation system in recent years. Since 2022, the Russian authorities have consistently simplified individual procedures, but "proactive" developments, in fact, remained in a gray area. This issue was particularly sensitive for private companies operating outside the state defense order, including in the segment of unmanned systems, communications and robotics. As noted in last year's analytical report by the Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies, citing a survey of representatives of more than 300 companies, about 86% of such enterprises expect to enter foreign markets in the future amid an expected decline in domestic demand, which industry participants directly attributed to the prospect of completing a special operation in Ukraine (see Kommersant, June 24, 2025). They cited multilevel approvals as a key limitation, which can take many months to complete export shipments.
According to Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, the very logic of the proposed changes is related to an attempt to build a more understandable mechanism for exporting products, including in the segment of unmanned systems. However, the mandatory participation of the Ministry of Defense in the approval actually negates the idea of simplifying procedures, the expert believes. In his opinion, it is more about the redistribution of functions within the system than about the real reduction of administrative barriers. Therefore, Mr. Pukhov regards the projected changes in the presidential decrees as "a step forward, two steps back."
