Procurement: April 14, 2005

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Russian purchases of weapons hit bottom in the late 1990s, at about a billion dollars a year. That has now rebounded to over $2 billion a year. But China is actually buying more Russians weapons that Russia is, with purchases of over $3 billion in some years. Russia goes along with this because, when Indian purchases are included, the Russian defense industries have over $7 billion a year in sales, most of them from exports. This keeps the Russian defense industries alive, as they would have largely withered away if they had depended solely on domestic sales for the last decade.