Is it true that European warehouses are running out of weapons that can be supplied to Ukraine? How exactly are interruptions summarized? Is it time to expect a sharp increase in investments in the military-industrial complex? And what will the new arms race look like? About it Fedor Lukyanov talked to Maxim ShepovalenkoDeputy Center for Policy and Technology Analysis, for program “International Review”.

– Is NATO really running out of functions or is it just a bargain, or even some kind of trick? Is it even worth taking literally these lamentations, which now sound literally every day?

– There is a large expenditure of means of use (what we call the familiar word “ammunition”) and there are deliveries already from the available stock of equipment of the military department of Western countries. But I think it’s still far from exhausted. It cannot be said that deliveries to Ukraine may be completed in the near future due to the depletion of reserves. This is far from true.

– Do they have some kind of formal, informal limit below which you cannot fall?

– There is, of course. All this is enshrined in NATO regulations. There’s another problem. In the 1990s and at the beginning of the zero western military-industrial complex has undergone optimization. Obviously, after the Cold War, the demand for a sharp drop and the potential for conflict decreased. The conflicts that we observed in the 1990s–2000s are stable, sometimes of medium intensity. The number of weapons is not required. The production capacities of Western companies are still in that minimized form. Of course, the field of fearful Ukrainian conflict requires a lot of food. Although this conflict is not high, but of medium intensity, the costs are very serious.

– Optimization also applies to the Connected together?

– And the United Collected, and NATO allies, and countries that are not common cases, but formally the exclusive status of the main allies outside NATO.

– Which of the things that Kyiv is now very actively requesting is the most scarce? So what could be the problem?

– In the means of application. The means of delivery are not as important as the media. Very high consumption of artillery shells and unguided rockets. This is a problem in the West, in particular in Americans, because we are seeing allergic reactions in conditions of increased delay. Let’s say, South Korea, which wants to sit on two chairs: both to maintain allied relations with the United States, and not to spoil them with Russia. They really do not want Russia (the permanent one, for whom these supplies are) to renew relations with North Korea. This is not at all what they need.

– Putin at Valdai warned South Korea very clearly. We see everything.

Especially since there was a warning.

– What we talked about above, if there was optimization then, now there should be optimization in the other direction. Can we expect and to what extent a sharp increase in investments in the military-industrial complex? And what will the new arms race look like?

– As a matter of fact, investments have already passed. I am not ready to give exact figures, but in reality, orders have increased, including taking into account the expenses incurred and the replenishment of warehouse stocks. I think that we still will not see a sharp rise in armaments, because the market situation for manufacturers remains unclear. That is, it is not clear when the Ukrainian conflict arises, the placed orders may be unclaimed by the end consumer.

– But this is interesting. We – those who pretend to study the emergence of problems and the likelihood of what will happen next – all unanimously proceed from the fact that the period of conflict is currently long and the Ukrainian conflict is clearly far from the last. That is, the fruits of this do not believe, it turns out?

– The markets have no confidence either in the timing, or in the geography of manifestations, or in their severity. This is such a territory, so to speak, mined, so walking on a mine is semi-random … Nobody knows where it will shoot.

“We grew up with the American military-industrial complex inflating war in order to stake its profits. Can we say that the military-industrial complex really plays the role of “hawks”?

– I would not say. It sometimes seems to me that diplomats from the outside inflate much more than the civil defense and the defense behind them, which is still guided by the military budget. The military budget is a high degree of confidence in forecasting.

On the one hand, it cannot be said that the Ukrainian conflict arose from scratch, everything was moving towards this. But no one, I think, could foresee the scale, the scope of hostilities, the use of weapons. That is why there is uncertainty – incomprehensibility of what actions are coming in the next year, whether it comes from a truce, whether everything will subside or the incidence will decrease. I think that neither our nor Western experts need to predict this.

– That is, the cold war situation, when (especially from the Soviet side) aviation capacities are ready with a wild reserve in case of any conflict, and they were copied – is this unlikely now?

– I don’t think that will happen.

I don’t know if this is good news or bad, but we think it’s good news.