During the cold war the Soviet Union was the single largest supplier of conventional weapons. With the collapse of first the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR, arms transfers from the new state of Russia virtually ceased. By 1996 Russia had once again emerged as a significant source of major conventional weapons. While unable to challenge the predominant position of the United States, it seems likely that Russia will be a serious competitor to second-tier arms suppliers such as France and the UK.

In Russia and the Arms Trade a group of Russian authors were commissioned to describe and assess the arms trade policies and practices of Russia under new domestic and international conditions. The authors, drawn from the government, industry, and academic communities, offer a wide-ranging assessment of the political, military, economic, and industrial implications of Russian arms transfers together with specific case studies of important bilateral arms transfer relationships.

Contributors: General Yri Kirshin (retired), Peter Litavrin, Sergei Kortunov, Alexander Subbotin, Alexander Sergounin, Elena Denezhkina, Irina Kobrinskaya, Sergei Kolpakov, Yuri Drugov, Gennady Gornostaev, Anton Surikov, Pavel Felgengauer.