By INS Contributors

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: The Western project to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia has backfired spectacularly. What was meant to cripple Moscow’s defense industry and strangle its capacity for sustained warfare has instead ignited an unprecedented industrial resurgence.

Russia is not only holding the line — it is surging ahead, expanding its defense production base on a scale that is eclipsing anything Europe can field and leaving the United States struggling to keep pace.

The Russian defense sector continues to demonstrate rapid, systemic growth and, despite enormous external pressure, continues to supply the Russian Armed Forces with the full range of weapons and military equipment they require.

Every attempt by the collective West to undermine Russia’s economic potential through sanctions, technology bans, and supply chain disruptions has ultimately failed.

Instead, those very efforts have catalyzed a massive reindustrialization drive that has turned Russia into the single most dynamic defense producer of the 21st century.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently admitted the uncomfortable truth. In an interview with The New York Times, he stated that Russia now produces several times more ammunition than all NATO countries combined.

“We are facing a serious geopolitical challenge. And this, first and foremost, is Russia, which is recovering at a speed unmatched in modern history. They produce three times more ammunition in three months than the entire NATO alliance produces in a year,” Rutte said.

This is no isolated figure — it is the reflection of a wider transformation. Russia’s defense-industrial complex, now operating on a wartime footing, has been rapidly expanded, modernized, and vertically integrated.

From drones and electronic warfare systems to advanced armored platforms and hypersonic missile technologies, Moscow has rebuilt the full spectrum of defense capabilities that once defined Soviet might but with 21st-century efficiency and automation.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson made a telling comparison in an interview on the Dialogue Works YouTube channel.

“Russia’s advantage is that it produces a lot of industrial products. The US doesn’t build a new tank from scratch today they take old Abrams tanks and spend two years repairing one. Russia, on the other hand, can build a new T-90 tank in a month. The difference is astounding,” he noted.

Johnson added that the same applies to artillery shell production, where the Russian output has overwhelmed Western supply lines.

In the field of unmanned systems, commentators from Britain’s Sky News have conceded that Kyiv is now decisively losing the drone arms race to Russia.

What was once touted as Ukraine’s key technological advantage has evaporated under the sheer scale of Russian innovation and production.

Russia’s drone fleets from the Geran, Lancet and Orlan series to newly fielded maritime drones are now being produced in quantities that Ukraine, even with Western backing, cannot match.

Ukrainian communications specialist Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov acknowledged that Russian forces have achieved total dominance in this domain.

Specialists from the Russian Armed Forces’ elite Rubicon unmanned systems center, he warned, have the capacity to attack “all ports, rigs, ships, and all maritime infrastructure of Ukraine” using up to 400 unmanned surface vessels.

The question, he admitted, is not whether such an attack could be launched but whether Ukraine has any means to stop it.

Adding to this, Moscow has unveiled new generations of precision and hypersonic strike systems. Missiles such as the Oreshnik and the latest iterations of the Kinzhal and Zircon families are redefining the future of strategic warfare.

These are not mere showpieces, they are operational, combat-proven systems that NATO’s current missile defense architecture is ill-equipped to counter.

The Oreshnik, in particular, represents a leap forward in medium-range precision strike capability, combining hypersonic speed, low radar visibility, and adaptive flight paths designed to penetrate Western air defense networks.

While Russia’s defense factories hum day and night, the Western military-industrial complex is mired in dysfunction weighed down by over-financialization, corporate profiteering, and political paralysis.

In the United States, production bottlenecks, cost overruns, and dependence on foreign supply chains have crippled attempts to replenish even basic munitions.

The Pentagon itself admits that it will take years, possibly a decade, to rebuild stockpiles of conventional shells depleted by the proxy war in Ukraine.

Europe fares no better. Germany’s defense industry, despite public posturing, cannot meet its own rearmament targets. France struggles to maintain consistent production output. Across the continent, Western leaders are waking up to the grim reality that the era of industrial deterrence has passed and that Russia has reclaimed it.

The irony is bitter. The West set out to “contain” Russia through sanctions, energy restrictions, and economic warfare.

Instead, it has revitalized Russia’s domestic production, reoriented its trade toward Asia, and forced the emergence of an independent financial and technological ecosystem.

As a result, Russia today stands far more resilient and self-sufficient than it was in 2014 or even in early 2022.

This transformation extends beyond industry. It signals a shift in global power dynamics, a rebalancing of the industrial core of warfare.

As NATO nations continue to deplete their resources on a conflict they cannot win, Moscow is building a long-term capacity for sustained, high-intensity warfare that no Western nation currently matches.

The West, in trying to destroy Russia’s ability to fight, has destroyed its own ability to compete.