Features | Security | Southeast Asia

How the Russia-Ukraine War Rewired Southeast Asia’s Arms Trade

The war did what years of Western pressure could not, effectively removing Russia as a viable arms supplier to Southeast Asia.

A Malaysian SU-30MKM is refueled by a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the Washington Air National Guard’s 141st Air Refueling Wing in the sky above Malaysia, Nov.13, 2024. It was the first time a U.S. aircraft performed aerial refueling for a Russian-made fighter.

For two decades, Southeast Asian governments took special care to diversify their weapons catalogs. U.S. fighters were balanced against Russian submarines, French frigates against South Korean trainers, Israeli radars against Chinese patrol boats. By diversifying defense procurement across major powers, ASEAN states could modernize without owing allegiance to anyone, preserving the strategic autonomy that has long defined the bloc’s posture toward great power rivalry. 

Russia was indispensable to this arrangement. Moscow offered capable aircraft, submarines, and air defense systems at prices Western suppliers could not match, accepted unconventional payment arrangements, including barter in palm oil and coffee, and asked few political questions in return.

That arrangement is now collapsing, and the consequences extend far beyond accounting ledgers in defense ministries. The Russia-Ukraine War has done what years of Western pressure could not, effectively removing Russia as a viable arms supplier to Southeast Asia and pushing the region’s militaries toward a defense ecosystem built around NATO standards. 

The shift was not planned or coordinated. It is simply the cumulative result of dozens of pragmatic procurement decisions made under sanctions risk, supply uncertainty, and the growing operational cost of fielding equipment that cannot link with systems provided by other partners. The aggregate effect, however, is reshaping the strategic geography of the region.

Russia’s share of new ASEAN defense contracts fell from nearly 20 percent during 2017–2021 to less than 3 percent in 2022–2024. What deliveries continue to arrive, most prominently Myanmar’s Su-30SME fighters, are working through backlogs from contracts signed years ago. New orders of Russia arms have all but disappeared. 

China, despite its expanding economic footprint and active courting of regional militaries, has not filled the void Russia left behind in Southeast Asia. Compared to Western powers, its share of priced contracts during the same period is negligible. Instead, suppliers outside the traditional big three – China, Russia, and the United States – including France, South Korea, Turkiye, and India, now account for roughly 85 percent of the region’s contract value. 

The Philippine serves as a telling example. In November 2021, Manila signed a contract for 16 Russian Mi-17 helicopters under President Rodrigo Duterte, who had openly framed the purchase as part of a rebalancing away from Washington. Within weeks of the initial down payment in January 2022, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and the deal turned from a bargain into a sanctions trap. Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez later acknowledged that concerns extended well beyond the helicopter program itself, reaching into the broader question of whether Philippine banks and overseas remittances might be caught up in secondary sanctions. 

The administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., which took office in mid-2022, canceled the contract and turned to the S-70i Black Hawk, manufactured in Poland by a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. Washington offered $100 million in Foreign Military Financing explicitly to offset the cancellation. Instead of “rebalancing” the Philippines’ military procurement, the Philippine Air Force moved even more deeply into U.S. logistics networks.

The Philippines, a U.S. ally, has always relied heavily on American arms. By contrast, Vietnam’s military was built around Russian platforms, from Su-30 fighters to Kilo-class submarines to S-300 air defense systems. Hanoi had actually slowed its Russian purchases well before 2022, partly because of the risk of sanctions under the United States’ 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act and partly because of a domestic anti-corruption campaign that scrutinized large defense contracts. 

The Russia-Ukraine War sped up what had been a process of gradual disengagement. Access to Russian spare parts, software updates, and depot-level overhauls became unpredictable,........

© The Diplomat