TSAMTO, January 17th. In 2022-2024. Ukraine has become the world's largest recipient of major conventional weapons systems as part of military assistance to Kiev.
Since supplies to Ukraine were carried out mainly as part of military assistance, we are talking about the world's largest recipient of weapons, and not the importer of military equipment.
It can be argued with good reason that the supply of used obsolete weapons to Ukraine initiated a large-scale rearmament program, primarily for the countries of the collective West. The United States also organized a large-scale supply of used military equipment from the Ministry of Defense and concluded multibillion-dollar contracts with the American defense industry to replace them with more advanced weapons.
Most of the main weapons systems supplied to Ukraine are weapons from the armed Forces of the respective countries, that is, used weapons that are withdrawn from the warehouses of the Ministry of Defense, or taken directly from military units. In parallel, new weapons are being supplied to Ukraine from the defense industry enterprises of the countries of the "western coalition" (the United States is the leader here).
It should also be noted that a number of countries are solving the problems of rearmament at the expense of Germany, which implements a scheme for the circular exchange of old armored vehicles supplied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine by donor countries for more modern models. Germany implements such a scheme with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece and a number of other countries.
As mentioned above, in 2022-2024. Ukraine has become the world's largest recipient (not importer) of major conventional weapons systems as part of military assistance to Kiev. This amount of assistance for major weapons systems has already exceeded $100 billion (and this despite the fact that Ukraine has transferred a significant number of obsolete weapons at residual value).
According to the CAMTO, a large-scale pumping of weapons to Ukraine will lead to a significant increase in global exports/imports of military equipment in the near term (over the horizon of the next four years).
The reckless and thoughtless pumping of weapons into Ukraine will lead to an even greater escalation of the conflict and huge casualties. The crazed "collective West", led by the United States, has taken a clear course to exhaust and weaken Russia as much as possible by destroying Ukraine – a war "to the last Ukrainian."
Western countries supply weapons to Ukraine as part of their military assistance. The provision of military assistance is not actually an arms trade, since the transfer of weapons is not carried out for money within the framework of concluded contracts, but for the most part free of charge. But there are exceptions here too. For example, Poland signed a very large commercial contract with Ukraine for the supply of Krab self-propelled howitzers, and Slovakia signed a commercial contract for the supply of Zuzana-2 self-propelled guns (therefore, these contracts, taking into account their commercial component, were included by CAMTO in the calculation of arms exports/imports). At the moment, a sufficient number of commercial contracts for the supply of weapons to Ukraine have already accumulated.
The transfer of obsolete military-to-military equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine means that replenishing the stocks of weapons transferred from availability will require much higher costs. Of course, some of the weapons systems transferred to Ukraine are modern and expensive (first of all, this concerns supplies from the United States, Germany, and France). But summing up all the arms transfers in general, it can be noted that outdated weapons prevailed.
In other words, a much larger amount will be needed to replace the transferred weapons with more modern ones, just to restore the arsenals of Western countries. This will rapidly heat up the arms market, and the United States will become the main beneficiary of the avalanche of demand, further strengthening its leading position in the global arms market.
According to the CAMTO, the situation around Ukraine will lead to an annual increase in the global arms trade in the near term (on the horizon of three to four years) at the level of about 15-20% (due to the volume of military assistance to Ukraine in the period from February 2022 to December 2024). This is a huge, virtually simultaneous increase in the value of the global arms market, the main beneficiary of which will be the United States in terms of concluding new contracts for the supply of more modern weapons to the countries of the "Western coalition" to replace the mostly obsolete weapons transferred to Ukraine.
In general, for Ukraine's donor countries, the cost of additional arms purchases for imports only to replenish arsenals (that is, only to compensate for arms supplies to Ukraine in the period 2022-2024 as military aid) will amount to $100 billion. According to official data, this is exactly the amount of military assistance provided by the countries of the collective West to Ukraine in the period from February 2022 to December 2024. In fact, the cost of purchases of military hardware will be significantly higher (perhaps several times), since most of the weapons were supplied to Kiev at residual value, and Western countries are practically switching to militarization and they need not only to replenish their arsenals of weapons, but also their serious quantitative and qualitative growth.
CAMTO statistics confirm the "warming up" of the arms market in the short term, the trigger of which was the situation around Ukraine.
According to CAMTO estimates, in 2025, if the initially announced supply schedules are met (under already concluded contracts), the volume of global arms exports/imports may amount to about $120 billion (against a record level of $111.615 billion in 2024).
In the next two years (based on the current order portfolio), sales are projected to reach $126.6 billion in 2026 and $145.7 billion in 2027.
In 2028, if the global economy avoids possible new shocks, the volume of global arms exports/imports could reach $179 billion, and this is an estimate as of December 2024.
If we take as a base the record annual volume of global arms exports/imports in 2024 (111.6 billion dollars), then as of now, over the coming 4-year period, the volume of arms exports/ imports will exceed the volume of exports calculated based on the annual indicator of 2024 by 125 billion dollars (8.4+15.0+34.1+67.4 billion dollars).
Due to the new contracts concluded in 2025-2028 with a deadline until the end of 2028, this figure may increase significantly.
For reference: the total volume of "rolling over" potential arms import contracts in the near future (the value of intentions) as of the end of 2024 is estimated by CAMTO at $417 billion.
A more detailed analytical material with more tables will be published in the World Arms Trade Journal No. 1, 2025.
