📉 Less kit, fewer losses. In summer 2025, Russia’s losses fell to 83 tanks and 189 armored fighting vehicles (AFVs). Reasons: equipment shortages, depleted stockpiles, and the dominance of strike drones. Heavy armor is now used sparingly, mainly to ferry infantry.
🛠️ Chipmakers face import bans; Minpromtorg rolls out a “domestic content” scoring system. The scoring framework is due by end-2025, with phased bans from 2027 on purchasing foreign equipment with budget funds where a Russian analogue exists.
🙅♂️ State buyers are already skirting restrictions. The common workaround is “mixed lots”: a single tender bundles items that have Russian analogues with those that don’t. In such cases, the domestic-preference rule doesn’t cover the entire lot, allowing foreign equipment to be purchased. 71% of IT firms report this practice. Other loopholes include inflated technical specifications and deliberate procedural errors.
More from Russia’s information space — in ESCU Monitoring #34
