How HIMARS and Sanctions are Choking Russia’s Weapons Trade

Moscow will go to great lengths to protect its military exports, even while under pressure to replace equipment destroyed in Ukraine.

"We're in a state right now where it's more difficult to predict how sanctions are really going to impact Russia or their exports," Samuel Bendett—an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and an advisor at CNA—told Newsweek.

Its very unlikely, he said, that Russia would cancel exports to countries like Algeria, Vietnam, or India, because it has to reroute the resources to the war fighting efforts, suggesting it would be a "geopolitical disaster."

"In some ways Russia will lose out on a certain share," Bendett said. "In another sense, I think Russia will maintain its share, because losing that is not an option for the Russian defense industry, for its military industrial sector and for the government, where military-to-military contacts and military technical cooperation is a key and very central part of its foreign policy."

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