Russian-supplied airpower, intelligence and battlefield techniques drawn from its struggle in Ukraine are serving to Myanmar’s army authorities flip the tide in a civil struggle now coming into its sixth yr.
China wields the best affect over Myanmar’s generals in addition to the highly effective ethnic armed teams primarily based alongside the prolonged China-Myanmar border, however Russian-made jets, helicopters and drones have handed the army a decisive battlefield edge.
Beneficial Tales
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Moscow has emerged because the Myanmar regime’s most vital defence associate, based on Ian Storey, senior fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and writer of the e book Putin’s Russia and Southeast Asia.
Storey instructed Al Jazeera that Russian weapons within the fingers of Myanmar’s army have been used to “devastating impact” in opposition to not simply insurgent targets however civilian websites, together with colleges and hospitals.
“The loss of life toll has been appalling,” he stated.
Past expertise and tools, the generals additionally seem to have adopted Russia’s so-called “meat assaults” techniques – waves of infantry thrown at enemy defensive strains with little regard for casualties, Storey stated.
Nationwide conscription, launched in 2024, has reportedly swollen Myanmar’s military ranks by almost 100,000 troopers, offering the human cannon fodder such techniques demand and which first got here to consideration in Russia’s struggle of attrition in Ukraine.
“The junta has copied Russian techniques, utilizing conscripted troopers in human wave assaults in opposition to insurgent forces,” Storey stated.
Moscow-Myanmar embrace
The army’s 2021 coup, which ignited the continuing civil struggle in Myanmar, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a yr later have drawn the 2 sanctioned nations right into a a lot nearer embrace.
The Kremlin was among the first to welcome coup chief Senior Basic Min Aung Hlaing as a visitor, whereas military-ruled Myanmar turned the one Southeast Asian nation to totally endorse Russian President Vladimir Putin’s struggle on Ukraine and supply army help – reportedly, mortar shells and focusing on techniques for tanks.
Based on Storey’s e book, in early 2023, the top of Ukraine’s army intelligence, Lieutenant-Basic Kyrylo Budanov, revealed that Moscow had requested army provides from nations utilizing Russian-made weaponry, together with Myanmar, to make up for tools shortfalls hampering Russian fight operations in Ukraine.
A number of months later, Storey writes, Russian tank producer Uralvagonzavod reportedly imported optical focusing on techniques from Myanmar to improve Russian T-72 tanks that Moscow had taken out of storage, refurbished and despatched to the entrance line in Ukraine.
Funding offers have since been signed by each side, a Russian-built nuclear energy plant proposed, and direct flights resumed after a 30-year hiatus. However weaponry stays on the coronary heart of the connection.
Moscow has equipped munitions, drones and anti-drone techniques to Myanmar’s army that, based on the battle monitoring group ACLED, has waged an more and more violent marketing campaign in opposition to adversaries and civilians alike in a civil struggle that has killed at the least 96,000 individuals because the coup.
Storey recognized six Russian Sukhoi Su-30 jets – the final of which arrived in December 2024 – because the army regime’s most formidable plane, citing witness accounts of Russian personnel servicing the plane in Myanmar.
Based on the United Nations, air assaults had been the main reason for civilian casualties in Myanmar, with deaths from aerial raids rising 52 p.c in 2025 in contrast with the earlier yr.
Battle monitor ACLED stated that between February 1, 2021 and March 13, 2026, 5,912 air strikes had been recorded, with at the least 4,865 reported deaths. Moreover, ACLED recorded 931 drone assaults throughout the identical interval that resulted in at the least 366 reported deaths.
Earlier this month, ethnic Karen armed teams combating the army reported that authorities forces killed at the least 30 villagers in Bago area, situated northeast of Myanmar’s largest metropolis, Yangon, together with ladies and youngsters. All however 5 had been killed in aerial assaults. Later, the survivors had been additionally reportedly killed by floor forces.
Days later, air assaults reportedly killed at the least 116 prisoners of struggle and wounded 32 others at a detention camp in Rakhine state, based on the Arakan Military group. The assault was one of many deadliest of the battle because the bombing of a village within the nation’s Sagaing area in April 2023 that killed greater than 160 individuals.
Final yr, the army authorities turned the primary overseas purchaser of Russia’s new Mi-38T assault-transport helicopters.
Along with different Russian-supplied rotorcraft, helicopters enable Myanmar’s forces to conduct strikes and swiftly transfer troops into place, Storey added.
‘Techniques of terror’
Though insurgent teams battling the army gained an early benefit in the usage of drones, the regime has since surged forward in drone warfare.
Russia has geared up Myanmar with surveillance, fight and suicide drones, reportedly together with the fixed-wing Albatross-M5 unmanned aerial automobile (UAV), the Orlan-10E with optical and thermal imaging able to remaining airborne for 16 hours, and the kamikaze-style VT-40 (named after slain pro-Russian struggle blogger Vladlen Tatarsky).
These military-grade UAVs are technically superior to the industrial off-the-shelf fashions utilized by Myanmar’s insurgent forces, which Russian-supplied anti-drone techniques can intercept and disable with ease, Storey stated.
Myanmar’s army has additionally moved to institutionalise its drone drive. In 2024, it established a devoted Drone Warfare Directorate and has since deployed specialised drone coaching items that may be hooked up to present army formations, a shift that indicators drone warfare has develop into central to conventional armed forces’ operations.
In western Myanmar’s Chin state, Olivia Thawng Luai, former defence secretary of the Chin Nationwide Defence Power – an ethnic group combating the army, has watched because the regime’s assaults have advanced to incorporate unmanned aerial warfare.
Drone strikes have multiplied, Thawng Luai stated, alongside a marked improve in gyrocopter and paramotor – motorised paragliders – assaults throughout the central drylands, which she attributes partly to the army needing to preserve jet gasoline.
“However the techniques of terror in opposition to the civilian inhabitants stay the identical,” she stated.
Combating round Chin state’s former capital, Falam, has seen Myanmar’s army deploy greater than 1,000 troopers in an effort to retake the strategic city, based on a supply combating on the entrance line.
An preliminary column of about 450 authorities troopers despatched to take the city again from Chin’s anti-regime forces was ambushed and halted. What adopted was successive advances of smaller items alongside comparable routes. Every push by the army noticed heavy losses, with dozens of troopers reported killed as they tried to maneuver in formation in direction of their goal.
Most of these despatched ahead had been described as newly conscripted troopers, with items repeatedly committing extra troops regardless of mounting casualties. Footage from the world seems to indicate trenches at a hilltop place lined with the our bodies of regime troopers after failed assaults.
Myanmar’s insurgent teams are additionally seeking to Ukraine for classes in the best way to combat a struggle in opposition to a bigger, better-equipped adversary.
Fibre-optic first-person-view (FPV) drones, a expertise that remodeled the battlefield in Ukraine’s favour, have emerged as probably the one means by which insurgent forces can strike regime targets from standoff ranges of as much as 20km (12.4 miles), based on Bangkok-based safety analyst Anthony Davis.
In contrast to standard radio-frequency FPV drones, the fibre-optic variants are successfully resistant to digital jamming and might bypass Russian-supplied anti-drone techniques, Davis stated.
Since late 2025, some opposition forces have examined the expertise to good impact, he stated.
However what stays unsure is whether or not the resistance can coordinate nicely sufficient to construct a safe, commercially pushed provide chain able to sourcing and assembling elements on the scale wanted to make a strategic distinction with drones, Davis defined.
“Over a interval of six months or one yr, that suggests flooding the battlespace with hundreds of those drones and small items skilled to deploy them, one thing which a piecemeal method within the preliminary part will nearly definitely fail to realize,” he stated.
Deepening alliance
Sergei Shoigu, Putin’s shut confidant and former defence minister, visited Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw in early February.
Shoigu was the primary senior overseas official to go to the nation following military-organised elections, which had been largely dismissed as a sham to bolster army rule.
Through the go to, each nations signed a four-year army cooperation settlement – the newest signal of Moscow and Naypyidaw’s rising ties, which adopted Russia establishing a satellite tv for pc imagery centre within the capital final yr.
The satellite tv for pc centre, mixed with surveillance drones, has given the army a sharper image of enemy positions on the battlefield. At sea, naval cooperation has expanded too: joint workout routines have helped Myanmar’s forces develop sea resupply, naval touchdown and offshore bombardment capabilities, based on analysts.
The connection has additionally expanded to area.
Final month, Russia introduced it might assist choose and prepare Myanmar’s first astronaut.
Pyae (identify modified to guard the identification), a former Myanmar army physician who held the rank of captain, was despatched to Russia’s St Petersburg on a three-year coaching programme in 2015, changing into one in every of some 600 Myanmar officers who had been enrolled in Russian army establishments by 2018, based on a report in Moscow’s state-run TASS information company.
Pyae defected from the army in March 2021 and now works with the Myanmar Defence and Safety Institute – a analysis group shaped by ex-officers in Myanmar’s army.
Persevering with to keep up contact with a community of serving troopers in Myanmar, he stated experiences filtering again describe “quite a bit” of Russian trainers conducting upkeep and instruction on Russian-supplied plane and tools.
“We even have experiences of sighting Chinese language and Russian drone trainers close to the entrance strains,” he stated.
In his view, Russia doesn’t see Myanmar as a very valued army associate.
“We’re only a nation they will manipulate and exploit,” he stated.
From the connection, Moscow secures regular arms revenues, as Myanmar – lower off from Western suppliers – has grown closely depending on Russian weapons, upkeep and upgrades. It additionally gained a political, financial and army foothold in Southeast Asia, amongst different benefits.
As Pyae sees it, with out Russian assist, Myanmar’s army “would have misplaced already”.
Moscow’s Calculus
The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Storey stated Russia’s long-term aim in Myanmar is sustaining a marketplace for army and power exports whereas demonstrating to the West that diplomatic isolation has its limits.
“Russia values Myanmar’s friendship as a manner of displaying the West that makes an attempt to isolate it diplomatically have failed,” he stated.
On Myanmar, Moscow and Beijing are aligned, he added.
“Neither want to see the junta defeated and changed with a extra Western-leaning authorities,” Storey stated.
But Russia’s report of standing by its companions is poor. It failed to stop the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and provided little significant assist to Venezuela or Iran after they got here beneath strain from the USA and its ally Israel within the case of the continuing assaults in opposition to the management in Tehran.
Storey can be sceptical that Moscow would act any in another way if Myanmar’s army management confronted an existential risk, because it did in late 2023 when an alliance of ethnic armies launched a sweeping offensive that made robust positive factors initially.
“It would merely stroll away,” he stated.
Pyae, the army defector and researcher, stated the armed teams resisting the army regime don’t have anything corresponding to the surface assist offered by Russia.
“The unhappy factor is that we aren’t getting the assist from the USA or EU nations we have to combat the army,” he stated.
Moscow, he added, is partly accountable for the human price of maintaining the army in energy.
“That at all times infuriates me, and I’ll at all times maintain them accountable for the losses of our individuals’s lives.”
