By N. C. Bipindra

New Delhi: The war with Russia since 2022 has pushed Ukraine to the top of the global arms importers list, as India emerged as the world’s second-largest arms importer with an 8.3% share in global weapons imports between 2021 and 2025.

A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report, released on March 9, 2026, said Ukraine accounted for 9.7% of the world’s arms imports for the same five-year period, as it bought weapons from Western nations to fight its war with Russia.

India’s dependence on foreign weapons and military systems was reducing compared to the five years between 2016 and 2020, according to the annual SIPRI report on ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2025’. “Indian arms imports fell by 4.0 per cent between 2016–20 and 2021–25,” the SIPRI report said.

It attributed the decline in India’s arms imports partially to the growing domestic defence industrial complex that was designing and producing weapons and military systems indigenously to meet the Indian armed forces’ demands, although domestic production was often substantially delayed.

The Indian government has been insisting on ‘Make in India’, Aatmanibharta (Self-Reliance) in defence manufacturing, and asking the foreign vendors to include a domestic manufacturing component and sourcing more from India in its military procurement programmes since 2014.

The defence acquisition procedures since 2016 have given primacy to the Indigenously Designed, Developed, and Manufactured category of procurements, apart from allocating a substantial 75% of its military capital expenditure to buy from Indian vendors, amounting to INR 139,000 crore in the FY27 annual defence budget.

India’s plans to buy 114 Rafale jets from France and six advanced conventional submarines from Germany to be built at the state-run Mazagon Docks and Shipbuilders Limited indicate that New Delhi’s dependence on foreign arms supplies would continue, the SIPRI report said.

Russia, France, and Israel continued to be the top three arms suppliers to India during the five years 2021-25, though the Indian dependence on Russian weapons has largely reduced and moved towards Western supplies, including the US.

Since 2007, India has bought nearly USD 25-billion worth of military equipment, mostly military cargo aircraft and helicopters, from the US.

“Russia’s share of Indian arms imports dropped from 70 per cent in 2011–15 to 51 per cent in 2016–20 and then to 40 per cent in 2021–25,” the report said. Between2021-25, France and Israel supplied 29 per cent and 15 per cent of India’s imports, respectively.

SIPRI attributed India’s growing arms production and large imports to its border tensions with arch-rivals China and Pakistan.

India has fought armed conflicts with both the nuclear-armed neighbours in the last five years, including the 2020 Ladakh conflict with China that ended in 2024 and the May 2025 Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.

The SIRPI report said Pakistan was the world’s fifth-largest importer of arms, with a 4.2% share in global weapons imports. Between 2021 and 2025, Pakistan’s arms imports grew by 66% from the 2016-2020 period.

Pakistan’s 80% arms imports came from China, with Turkey and the Netherlands being the second and third largest weapons suppliers.

The US was the world’s largest arms supplier, accounting for 42% of all weapons exports in the 2021-25 period, going up from 36% in the 2016-20 timeframe.

The US exported arms to 99 countries globally, including 35 in Europe, 18 in the Americas, 17 in Africa, another 17 in Asia and Ocenia region, and 12 in West Asia.

France was the second largest exporter of arms during the 2021-25 period, with a 9.8% share in all global weapons exports.

Russia came third, while Germany overtook China to become the fourth largest arms exporter during the same timeframe.

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