Russian-supplied airpower, intelligence and battlefield techniques drawn from its battle in Ukraine are serving to Myanmar’s navy authorities flip the tide in a civil battle now getting into its sixth 12 months.
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 navy a decisive battlefield edge.
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Moscow has emerged because the Myanmar regime’s most essential defence associate, in line with Ian Storey, senior fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and creator of the ebook Putin’s Russia and Southeast Asia.
Storey informed Al Jazeera that Russian weapons within the fingers of Myanmar’s navy have been used to “devastating impact” in opposition to not simply insurgent targets however civilian websites, together with faculties and hospitals.
“The demise toll has been appalling,” he mentioned.
Past know-how 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 mentioned.
Nationwide conscription, launched in 2024, has reportedly swollen Myanmar’s military ranks by practically 100,000 troopers, offering the human cannon fodder such techniques demand and which first got here to consideration in Russia’s battle of attrition in Ukraine.
“The junta has copied Russian techniques, utilizing conscripted troopers in human wave assaults in opposition to insurgent forces,” Storey mentioned.
Moscow-Myanmar embrace
The navy’s 2021 coup, which ignited the continuing civil battle in Myanmar, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a 12 months 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 Normal Min Aung Hlaing as a visitor, whereas military-ruled Myanmar turned the one Southeast Asian nation to totally endorse Russian President Vladimir Putin’s battle on Ukraine and supply navy help – reportedly, mortar shells and focusing on techniques for tanks.
In response to Storey’s ebook, in early 2023, the pinnacle of Ukraine’s navy intelligence, Lieutenant-Normal Kyrylo Budanov, revealed that Moscow had requested navy provides from nations utilizing Russian-made weaponry, together with Myanmar, to make up for tools shortfalls hampering Russian fight operations in Ukraine.
A couple 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 navy that, in line with the battle monitoring group ACLED, has waged an more and more violent marketing campaign in opposition to adversaries and civilians alike in a civil battle that has killed a minimum of 96,000 folks for the reason that coup.
Storey recognized six Russian Sukhoi Su-30 jets – the final of which arrived in December 2024 – because the navy regime’s most formidable plane, citing witness accounts of Russian personnel servicing the plane in Myanmar.
In response to the United Nations, air assaults had been the main explanation for civilian casualties in Myanmar, with deaths from aerial raids rising 52 p.c in 2025 in contrast with the earlier 12 months.
Battle monitor ACLED mentioned that between February 1, 2021 and March 13, 2026, 5,912 air strikes had been recorded, with a minimum of 4,865 reported deaths. Moreover, ACLED recorded 931 drone assaults throughout the identical interval that resulted in a minimum of 366 reported deaths.
Earlier this month, ethnic Karen armed teams preventing the navy reported that authorities forces killed a minimum of 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 a minimum of 116 prisoners of battle and wounded 32 others at a detention camp in Rakhine state, in line with the Arakan Military group. The assault was one of many deadliest of the battle for the reason that bombing of a village within the nation’s Sagaing area in April 2023 that killed greater than 160 folks.
Final 12 months, the navy 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 navy gained an early benefit in the usage of drones, the regime has since surged forward in drone warfare.
Russia has outfitted Myanmar with surveillance, fight and suicide drones, reportedly together with the fixed-wing Albatross-M5 unmanned aerial car (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 battle blogger Vladlen Tatarsky).
These military-grade UAVs are technically superior to the business off-the-shelf fashions utilized by Myanmar’s insurgent forces, which Russian-supplied anti-drone techniques can intercept and disable with ease, Storey mentioned.
Myanmar’s navy has additionally moved to institutionalise its drone power. In 2024, it established a devoted Drone Warfare Directorate and has since deployed specialised drone coaching models that may be hooked up to current navy 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 Pressure – an ethnic group preventing the navy, has watched because the regime’s assaults have developed to incorporate unmanned aerial warfare.
Drone strikes have multiplied, Thawng Luai mentioned, alongside a marked improve in gyrocopter and paramotor – motorised paragliders – assaults throughout the central drylands, which she attributes partly to the navy needing to preserve jet gasoline.
“However the techniques of terror in opposition to the civilian inhabitants stay the identical,” she mentioned.
Combating round Chin state’s former capital, Falam, has seen Myanmar’s navy deploy greater than 1,000 troopers in an effort to retake the strategic city, in line with a supply preventing 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 models alongside related routes. Every push by the navy noticed heavy losses, with dozens of troopers reported killed as they tried to maneuver in formation in the direction of their goal.
Most of these despatched ahead had been described as newly conscripted troopers, with models repeatedly committing extra troops regardless of mounting casualties. Footage from the realm 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 trying to Ukraine for classes in the best way to battle a battle in opposition to a bigger, better-equipped adversary.
Fibre-optic first-person-view (FPV) drones, a know-how that reworked the battlefield in Ukraine’s favour, have emerged as doubtlessly the one means by which insurgent forces can strike regime targets from standoff ranges of as much as 20km (12.4 miles), in line with Bangkok-based safety analyst Anthony Davis.
Not like typical radio-frequency FPV drones, the fibre-optic variants are successfully proof against digital jamming and may bypass Russian-supplied anti-drone techniques, Davis mentioned.
Since late 2025, some opposition forces have examined the know-how to good impact, he mentioned.
However what stays unsure is whether or not the resistance can coordinate effectively 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 12 months, that means flooding the battlespace with 1000’s of those drones and small models skilled to deploy them, one thing which a piecemeal method within the preliminary section will nearly definitely fail to attain,” he mentioned.
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 navy rule.
Throughout the go to, each nations signed a four-year navy 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 12 months.
The satellite tv for pc centre, mixed with surveillance drones, has given the navy 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, in line with analysts.
The connection has additionally expanded to house.
Final month, Russia introduced it will assist choose and prepare Myanmar’s first astronaut.
Pyae (identify modified to guard the identification), a former Myanmar navy 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 among some 600 Myanmar officers who had been enrolled in Russian navy establishments by 2018, in line with a report in Moscow’s state-run TASS information company.
Pyae defected from the navy in March 2021 and now works with the Myanmar Defence and Safety Institute – a analysis group shaped by ex-officers in Myanmar’s navy.
Persevering with to take care of contact with a community of serving troopers in Myanmar, he mentioned experiences filtering again describe “so much” 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 mentioned.
In his view, Russia doesn’t see Myanmar as a very valued navy associate.
“We’re only a nation they will manipulate and exploit,” he mentioned.
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 navy foothold in Southeast Asia, amongst different benefits.
As Pyae sees it, with out Russian assist, Myanmar’s navy “would have misplaced already”.
Moscow’s Calculus
The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Storey mentioned Russia’s long-term purpose in Myanmar is sustaining a marketplace for navy and vitality 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 mentioned.
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 mentioned.
But Russia’s file of standing by its companions is poor. It failed to stop the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and supplied little significant assist to Venezuela or Iran after they got here beneath strain from the US and its ally Israel within the case of the continuing assaults in opposition to the management in Tehran.
Storey can also be sceptical that Moscow would act any in another way if Myanmar’s navy management confronted an existential menace, because it did in late 2023 when an alliance of ethnic armies launched a sweeping offensive that made robust positive factors initially.
“It should merely stroll away,” he mentioned.
Pyae, the navy defector and researcher, mentioned the armed teams resisting the navy regime don’t have anything similar to the surface assist offered by Russia.
“The unhappy factor is that we’re not getting the assist from the US or EU nations we have to battle the navy,” he mentioned.
Moscow, he added, is partly liable for the human value of retaining the navy in energy.
“That all the time infuriates me, and I’ll all the time maintain them accountable for the losses of our folks’s lives.”
