Russia, which declared its ambition to become a leader in artificial intelligence back in 2017, has fallen noticeably behind the global frontrunners by the middle of the decade. An analysis of international indexes cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe shows that the country trails not only the United States and China, but also many G20 states and even some of its BRICS partners.
After adopting a national AI strategy in 2019, the authorities expected to narrow the gap with developed countries by 2030. But the war against Ukraine and the isolation that followed restricted scientific cooperation, accelerated the departure of specialists, and made access to components for computing infrastructure more difficult.
In all three indexes reviewed by the outlet, the United States ranks first and China follows. Russia usually appears around 30th place or lower. The country still retains some strengths, including developer activity in open source projects and the presence of large companies building their own generative models.
Yet the gap in advanced systems remains wide. According to the Stanford AI Index, in 2024 the United States produced 40 notable models, China 15, Europe three, and Russia none. In the Russian-language LLM Arena Ru ranking, the best Russian model, GigaChat Max 2, was only in 25th place at the time of writing.
Science has become a separate weak point. The number of English-language AI publications by Russian authors declined after the war began, and citation levels fell even more sharply: from more than 10,000 citations in 2022 to about 1,100 in 2024. The outlet links this to isolation and brain drain.
At the same time, the market is becoming increasingly concentrated around major corporate players. Smart Ranking estimated that in 2025 Russia’s AI market may have reached 1.9 trillion rubles, while 95% of monetization profits went to five largest companies. Against this backdrop, the idea of “sovereign AI” is shifting toward pragmatic cooperation with China, while official claims of future global leadership look increasingly detached from reality.