Almaz-Antey

Almaz-Antey is Russia's state-owned air and missile defence corporation, formed in 2002 by merging Soviet-era design bureaus including NPO Almaz and the Antey concern. It manufactures and services every major Russian air defence system in active deployment: S-400, Buk, Tor, and Pantsir. It is fully state-owned, headquartered in Moscow, and operates under direct Kremlin control.

The corporation gained infamy when a Buk missile it produced was linked to the 2014 downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard. In the current war, its Granit repair facility in Sevastopol was struck by Ukrainian drones on 19 March 2026, heavily damaging the building that restores S-400, S-300, Buk, and Tor systems. Between 1 and 15 March, Ukraine struck over 20 Russian air defence launchers across four oblasts, accelerating pressure on repair capacity.

Almaz-Antey has been under US and EU sanctions since 2014, yet it remains the irreplaceable backbone of Russia's layered air defence. Ukraine's sequential logic, destroy launchers then destroy the factories that restore them, directly targets this monopoly position. Whether Almaz-Antey can sustain output under wartime attrition and sanctions is central to how long Russia can defend its occupied territories.