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This prompted self-reflection in the West: If Russia\u2019s military wasn\u2019t as powerful as defense planners had thought before the war, how quickly could it recover?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even scientific methods to measure an opposing military are inexact, partly because those easiest to measure, such as personnel and equipment, might not be the most important given factors like corruption and morale. But estimates for how long Russia would take to reconstitute mostly fell into the five- to 10-year range, depending on how Western sanctions worked and the Kremlin\u2019s own goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no question \u2014 and I think [there\u2019s] unanimity in the intelligence community \u2014 it will take years for the Russians to build back up their ground forces,\u201d Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said in March 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her comments came amid the annual churn of officials visiting Capitol Hill from winter to early spring. Around the same time this year, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, America\u2019s top military officer in Europe, had a second opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe overall message I would give you is they\u2019ve grown back to what they were before,\u201d Cavoli said. \u201cThey\u2019ve got some gaps that have been produced by this war, but their overall capacity is very significant still. And they intend to make it go higher.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To some extent, the officials were discussing different elements of Russia\u2019s force. When Haines testified last year, she was joined by the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, who said Russia was five to 10 years away from reconstituting. By that, Berrier meant it would take Russia up to a decade to rebuild the high-end equipment lost earlier in the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cavoli, on the other hand, was discussing the overall size of Russia\u2019s military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, European and American defense officials, along with experts on the Russian military, told Defense News the Kremlin\u2019s force is reconstituting faster than expected. They gave three main reasons why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first is the resilience of Moscow\u2019s defense industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the war, Russia has almost tripled its defense budget, according to Richard Connolly, an expert on the country\u2019s economy at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. Russia is set to spend somewhere between $130 billion and $140 billion on defense in 2024, which is about 6% of gross domestic product<\/a> and a third of the government\u2019s overall budget, Connolly approximated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But because costs and wages are lower in Russia than in high-income countries, like many in NATO<\/a>, the Kremlin\u2019s defense fund buys much more than it would in the United States. When that conversion is taken into account, Russia\u2019s 2024 defense budget falls between $360 billion to $390 billion, Connolly estimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The spending trend itself has raised salaries. Working in the defense industry was once a middling career in Russia; it\u2019s now lucrative and attracting more workers. Based on official Russian figures, which Connolly noted may be inflated, the number of people working in the defense industry rose 20% during the war, from 2.5 million to about 3 million now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The funds have also gone toward procuring military hardware. Connolly estimates this share of the defense budget probably doubled during the war, helping Russia replace lost equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Connolly said he doubts the state of Russia\u2019s economy will factor into how the war ends. Moscow has a cadre of policy wonks guiding its country through sanctions, he noted, and they have lots of practice doing so. In fact, Putin recently replaced<\/a> a general at the helm of the Defence Ministry with an economist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second reason is Russia\u2019s ability to dodge financial penalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2022, the Biden administration and European partners passed a raft of sanctions meant to sink the Russian economy. These ranged from banning the sale of high-tech materials, such as microchips, to a price cap on Russian oil sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These haven\u2019t worked, multiple analysts told Defense News. That\u2019s in large part because Moscow has been able to reroute its supply lines through friendly countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chief among those partners is China. From 2022 to 2023, trade between Russia and China grew more than 26%, hitting an all-time high of $240 billion<\/a>, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beijing largely avoided sending weapons directly. Instead, Chinese companies became a vital supplier of the items Russia needed to build weapons itself \u2014 such as microchips and small electronics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This leads to the third point: Russia\u2019s reconstitution has relied on surprising levels of support from other U.S. adversaries, who, unlike China, have directly provided military aid to Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since October, North Korea has sent Russia about 10,000 shipping containers, which could include up to 3 million artillery rounds, according to U.S. government <\/a>figures. Russia has fired dozens of North Korean ballistic missiles since last fall<\/a>, an American diplomat told the U.N. in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran has also provided materiel. Specifically, it\u2019s sent a somewhat plodding attack drone known in Tehran as the Shahed-136 and in Moscow as the Geran-2. Russia has deployed swarms of these to overwhelm Ukraine\u2019s air defenses, firing more than 3,700 Shahed drones, of which there are several variants, during the war as of December, according to the Ukrainian government<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-1203636013.jpg.jpg\")