Imports of military equipment to Europe almost doubled in 2022, mainly due to bulk shipments to Ukraine, which has become the third largest arms importer in the world, according to a report released today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The report says that imports of conventional weapons increased by 93% year on year, which is also associated with the acceleration of military spending by several European states, in particular Poland and Norway.

“The invasion did cause a surge in arms demand in Europe, which has not yet fully manifested itself and is likely to lead to a further increase in imports from European states,” co-author of the annual report, Peter Weseman, told AFP. SIPRI’s research on the subject over the past three-plus decades.

Ukraine, which last year was a relatively insignificant importer of military equipment, unexpectedly became the third largest recipient of weapons on the planet in 2022 after Qatar and India, a direct result of Western assistance offered to repel the Russian army invasion since March 24. February 2022.

According to SIPRI, this country accounts for 31% of arms imports in Europe and 8% in the world.

Kyiv’s imports, including donations from the West, increased 60 times in 2022, the institute said.

While precise estimates are difficult to make due to the opacity of many contracts, experts say the global arms trade is worth more than $100 billion a year.

A jump in European imports was expected, given the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

However, this marked an even more impressive acceleration of the trend of rearmament of European states already recorded in the Old Continent after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.

Over the past five years (2018-2022), which SIPRI examines each time to draw conclusions about the main trends, European imports increased by 47% compared to the immediately preceding five years, and this at a time when world trade decreased by 5%.

Unlike Europe, all other continents have recorded a decline in arms imports over the past five years, especially in Africa (-40%), North and South America (-20%), and even in Asia (-7%) and the Middle East . (-9%), main markets.

On the export side, the top five positions over the past five years were occupied by the United States (40% compared to 33% in the previous five years), Russia (16%, despite a significant decrease in own sales last year), France (11%), China ( 5%) and Germany (4%).

Source: RES-IPE