Weapons deliveries: Peace researchers: Europe is preparing massively

The Russian attack on Ukraine and the uncertainty about the foreign policy course of US President Donald Trump have had the states upgrade up in Europe. Contrary to the global trend, European imports of heavy armaments, such as fighter jets, tanks and submarines, increased by a whopping 155 percent compared to the past two five-year periods, as can be seen from a new report by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute Sipri. In contrast, the global volume of such armor deliveries dropped by 0.6 percent.

“The new gun transfer numbers clearly reflect the upgrade, which takes place in response to the threat of Russia among states in Europe,” said Sipri program director Mathew George. The fact that the worldwide volume remained relatively unchanged is therefore due to the fact that some large armaments importers such as Saudi Arabia, India and China recorded significant import declines for various reasons – despite the high threat situation perceived in their regions.

The Sipri data relate to the volume of armor deliveries, not to their financial value. Since this volume can fluctuate sharply from year to year depending on the order situation and the peace researchers are concerned with long-term trends in their reports, they compare five-year periods instead of individual years, this time the years 2020-2024 in 2015-2019.

Meaningful figures for the Ukraine war

How strongly the Ukraine War has influenced armaments in recent years is particularly evident in the Sipri report on Ukrainian imports and Russian exports:

Ukraine has developed into the largest weapon importer on earth and almost healed its gun inventory in comparison of the five -year periods (plus 9,627 percent). Their share of global armaments imports rose from 0.1 to 8.8 percent. While the country imported only a few heavy weapons from abroad in February 2022 before the Russian invasion in February 2022, it was by far the largest armor importer in the world in 2023 and 2024. The largest arms suppliers were the United States (45 percent), Germany (12 percent) and Poland (11 percent). President Trump’s US government recently temporarily hired military aid for Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine itself exported 72 percent fewer armaments abroad – because it just needs the weapons themselves.

Russia’s arms exports decreased by a significant 64 percent. This means that the Russian share of global exports still corresponds to 7.8 percent – that is almost only a third of the 21 percent of the comparison period. That means: Russia sells much fewer weapons abroad because on the one hand it needs it even for its war of attack against Ukraine. On the other hand, Russian arms exports complain. The United States and its allies also put other states under pressure not to buy weapons from Russia anymore.

How Europe’s armaments imports are related to Trump

Europe’s import jumping not only has to do with Ukraine, but also with political changes in the course in the United States: In his first term (2017-2021), US President Trump has asked the European NATO partners to drastically increase their defense spending. As a result, many Europeans have followed, as well as the Sipri numbers: the European NATO countries have more than doubled their armaments (plus 105 percent).

The transatlantic relationships have deteriorated since Trump’s new election victory at the end of 2024. At the same time, Europe remains strongly dependent on the United States: 64 percent of the imports of European NATO countries have come from the United States in the past five years – and more is coming: According to Sipri, the Europeans have ordered 472 fighter jets and 150 fighter helicopters from the United States by the end of 2024 alone.

Peace researchers also see signs that Europe wants to free themselves from this dependency: “In view of an increasingly warlike Russia and stressful transatlantic relationships during the first Trump presidency, the European NATO countries have taken steps to reduce their dependence on arms imports and strengthen the European armaments industry,” said Sipri researcher Pieter Pieter Wezeman. It won’t be easy: “The transatlantic arms delivery ratio has deep roots,” said the expert.

Until further notice, the United States remained on the armaments market alone because of its leadership role in the production of fighter planes of the absolute top dog: Between 2020 and 2024, they exported armaments in 107 countries, whereby they were able to increase their arms exports by 21 percent and increase their global export share to 43 percent. This is followed by – far behind – France (9.6 percent), Russia (7.8), China (5.9) and Germany (5.6).

Germany as the fifth largest arms exporter on earth

While other large EU countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Poland were able to significantly increase their export volume, Germany from Germany decreased by 2.6 percent in a five-year comparison. A little more than a third of German arms deliveries went to states in the Middle East – mainly on Egypt and Israel – and to European countries, including primarily Ukraine.

“The numbers of how urgently need a restrictive German arms export control law is painfully clear, which the traffic light coalition has promised, but did not deliver,” said the disarmament expert at the Peace Organization Greenpeace, Alexander Lurz. He complained that a large number of German weapons were delivered to the Middle East crisis region. “Germany is still the fifth largest weapon exporter worldwide, whereby sales not only go in democracies and attacked states, but also to autocrats.”