As a result of the Russian war of aggression, Ukraine has become one of the world's largest importers of armaments within a year. Since the former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991, few heavy weapons have been imported from abroad - but last year, military aid from the USA and Europe made Ukraine the third-largest arms importer.

This emerges from a report published by the peace research institute Sipri in Stockholm on Monday. Only Qatar and India are ahead of Ukraine.

In the period 2018-2022, Ukraine ranks 14th with a share of 2.0 percent in the volume of global arms imports. Its main suppliers were the USA, Poland and Germany. The supplies were vital to efforts to halt the Russian offensive, Sipri wrote. Russia, on the other hand, relied almost exclusively on weapons it had manufactured itself, but also procured unmanned aerial vehicles and flying bombs from Iran.

In the wake of the Ukraine war and the strongly perceived threat from Russia, European arms imports rose by 47 percent over the past two five-year periods, according to the report - those of European NATO countries by as much as 65 percent. Globally, however, the volume of arms deliveries between countries fell by 5.1 percent. The USA remain the absolute industry leader, Germany one of the five largest suppliers.