June 13, 2025: The Russian 9A-91 assault rifle has been the standard national police automatic weapon since 1994. Most of the time police are armed with just a 9mm pistol. When more firepower is needed, they use their 9A-91 automatic weapons. Police training includes how to use and maintain the 9A-91. Most police personnel have served in the military and are already familiar with automatic weapons. The 9A-91 is not used by the military, except by some special operations Spetsnaz units.

Unlike most military small arms, the 9A-91 is not produced by the Kalashnikov Group, but by KBP. This firm concentrates on heavier and more specialized weapons than the soldier's AK assault rifle. The 9A-91 is a 2.5 kg weapon, with a 20 round box magazine. With the folding stock, it is 600mm long. Fold the stock and you have a compact weapon only 373 mm long. The 9A-91 can fire individual shots or on full automatic at 600-800 rounds a minute. Because of the characteristics of the Russian 9mm round, the effective aimed range of the weapon is 100 meters. On full automatic, these less accurate rounds can still wound or kill out to 200 meters. A scope can be mounted on the 9A-91, but the short range and unstable accuracy make that counterproductive. The VSK-84 is a sniper version of the 9A-91 with a scope and longer barrel and sturdier stock. This version is effective out to 400 meters. The vast majority of 9A-91s are used as auxiliary weapon for police when they need more individual firepower.

The 9A-91 is manufactured in Tula, a city 200 kilometers south of Moscow. All Russian weapons firms are kept alive by government subsidies during periods of low sales. Such was the case after the Cold War ended in 1991. Since the Ukraine War began in 2022, business for the Russian arms industry has increased so much that 20 percent of all manufacturing jobs are defense related. Current defense spending is nearly 8 percent of GDP.

One of the major producers of small arms is the Izhmash subsidiary Kalashnikov Group, which handles all research and manufacturing of weapons based on the original AK-47 design. Izhmash was originally founded in 1807 by the Czarist government as an arsenal to produce military weapons. In the 1920s the firm was owned by the Soviet Union and expanded to production to nonmilitary items like motorcycles, and later, automobiles, but it continued to be a major manufacturer of Russian military rifles, machine-guns and pistols.

This all began with a Russian World War II veteran, Mikhail Kalashnikov, who came up with a brilliant rifle design which so impressed his bosses that they named it after him. AK means Avtomat Kalashnikova which literally translates as Kalashnikov Automatic. This was no fluke. Kalashnikov had always been into mechanical things and grew up in Siberia where rural folk could own a rifle for hunting. He did and so was familiar with how rifles operated in addition to being a mechanical genius. Kalashnikov was conscripted in 1938 and because of his small size was assigned to a tank unit. There his ingenuity and mechanical skills came to the notice of his superiors, who praised and encouraged him. He was badly wounded in combat in 1941 and, while he spent six months recuperating, came up with some brilliant ideas for a new rifle design instigated by complaints he heard from other wounded infantry soldiers. He wrote to the senior officers who had praised his skills before the war and was transferred to a weapons development organization. Among his many innovations and designs over the next five years was the AK-47, which began replacing all older infantry rifles in 1949. Kalashnikov died in 2013 but until the end he hunted and innovated, backing things like the new AK-12 assault rifle the Kalashnikov Group has developed for the 21st century Russian military.