Russia has suffered a significant loss of its military power, including a good part of its most modern equipment, Ukraine is in full modernization and China has incurred an unprecedented increase in expenditure, according to the annual report of the specialized institute in the IISS defense.
The publication of the 2023 edition of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Military Balance comes almost a year after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
For the Russian army, the human losses of the first phases of the invasion were compensated by mobilization, but result in an influx of less experienced soldiers, underlines the IISS.
The institute notes a change in the composition of the Russian armored fleet. About half of its T-72B3 and T-72B3M tanks and many of its T-80s were lost, so the Russian military had to field older equipment to compensate for these losses.
According to the IISS, Russia has lost 6 to 8% of its tactical combat aircraft, but losses reach 10 to 15% on certain types of aircraft.
Pointing out that Ukraine had fewer fighter jets and suffered proportionally greater losses, the body estimates that kyiv has lost about half of its inventory of tactical fighter jets.
Ukraine having drawn heavily on its stockpiles of Soviet-era armaments, the supply of land armaments by Western countries is introducing a transformation of its army and increasing its capabilities, while seeing its inventory boosted by the influx of Soviet-era tanks supplied by Eastern European countries, which are moving towards more modern equipment.
Some 20 countries have also announced immediate or longer-term increases in defense spending or spending targets, while NATO, which Sweden and Finland want to join, has been reinvigorated.
At the same time, the modernization of the Chinese army represents for the United States the “main area of concern”, according to the IISS, which points out that the 7% increase in the defense budget in 2022 compared to the previous year is the largest in absolute terms.