Via Watches Of Espionage,
What watches have historically kept this emerging bloc that’s challenging the Western order on time?
2025 Russia–United States Summit
President Trump recently met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska, a land mass that was purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867 for a measly 7.2 million dollars. The meeting didn’t amount to a deal when it came to ending the war in Russia and Ukraine, and notably, neither leader was visibly wearing a watch in the photographs made available to the public.
Putin has an extensive watch collection, including an 18k yellow gold Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Moon Phase, a platinum A. Lange & Sohne, a Blancpain, and an IWC, but since the invasion of Ukraine has been seen only wearing a Russian-made watch from the Imperial Peterhof Factory (Raketa). Of note, Putin was seen wearing the watch in a visit to Magadan while en route to the Alaska summit.
In the intelligence world, every detail is scrutinized, including this one. We have discussed CIA analysis of foreign leaders’ timepieces (read HERE), and it is reasonable to conclude this was a conscious decision to demonstrate Russian prowess and watchmaking during a time of war. Just as the B-2 flanked by four F-35 Lightning IIs flying over as Trump and Putin strolled the red carpet was meant as a show of American air power, wearing a Russian-made watch could be meant to telegraph unity and a strong allegiance to Country.
The Big Four – Hard Targets
Russia is part of a larger grouping referred to at CIA as “The Big Four” hard targets or CRINK, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. We have to ask ourselves, what can we learn about these nations by looking through the lens of watches?
For Western intelligence agencies, including CIA, the Big Four are priority collection targets, and they present a particular challenge for traditional intelligence collection. Their global presence looms large, and their military capabilities are not to be underestimated.
Simply put, the Moscow-Beijing alliance fuels the national security concerns of the West. It’s no secret that both of these nations pose a global threat to Western interests, and at Watches of Espionage, we look at geopolitical tensions through the lens of timepieces. Surprisingly, much can be learned from analyzing the military-issued watches of both China and Russia (focusing on its Soviet period).
Meanwhile, to a much lesser extent, Iran and North Korea have their own watch culture in the military and intelligence space worthy of exploration, which we will address in a future Dispatch.
Why Hasn’t The Mainstream Watch Culture Covered These Watches? Are Military Watches From the Russia-China Bloc Collectible?
The majority of traditional military watch collectors don’t fawn over Chinese or Russian watches with the same fervor as they do Swiss and Japanese-made tool watches. But one thing should be made clear, that’s not because these nations are devoid of any watchmaking culture. It’s quite the opposite. Watchmaking is a rich and storied tradition in both China and Russia. But the military history, the enigmatic nature of these watches, and most interestingly, what they can tell us about these nations make them deserving of discussion.
Watches have historically been viewed solely as a commodity when it comes to Chinese and Russian manufacturers (although there are exceptions, more on that later). They’re cheap to procure, made with cost efficiency in mind, and often don’t have the same perception of quality as typical Swiss watches. And they aren’t meant to.
It’s important to understand that high quality, longevity, and artistry are not part of the production philosophy of watches, especially military watches, from Russia and China. Swiss brands put emotion at the core of the idea of “Swiss Watchmaking”, and those same companies that focused on the emotional component of watchmaking tradition also produced watches for Western military forces.
In addition to the overall “feel” of the watches, trade sanctions and geographical barriers did not allow the West to procure these watches when they were widely distributed. China was a closed state until the late ’70s, and the Soviet Union had similar policies up until dissolution when it came to trade and foreign visitors. When mechanical watchmaking was at its height in the ’50s through the ’70s, these states were not considered when it came to importing watches to the Western world. The inverse is true as well, and there were trade sanctions in place that made it difficult for the Soviet Union and China to purchase watches from Western nations.
To follow are a number of notable watches connected to the military from both China and Russia (again, focusing on the Soviet Union).
The Sleeping Giant: Chinese Military Watches
China has the world’s largest military by personnel count, with more than two million active duty service members; that statistic is not to be confused with who has the strongest military.
Recently, China’s sixth-generation fighter, referred to unofficially as the J-36, has emerged as a formidable contender for global air superiority. It signals a significant step forward for Beijing in a military technology race with Washington, but every capability of the J-36 has already been demonstrated by aircraft in the US inventory. In other words, it’s nothing new. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a credible threat.
The same sort of pattern, a technology emerging in the West with China later introducing a version, happened with watches in the ’60s. It’s something China has proven to excel at, taking a known technology and making it cheaper and easier to produce at scale.
In the 1950s, brands like Omega and Breitling famously produced chronographs for aviation applications for Western militaries, and even space programs. Meanwhile, the Chinese government went through a period when they produced use-case specific watches for military forces shortly after, the most famous being the 1963 Chronograph. It was issued directly to select pilots in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force in 1966. At the time, the PLAAF was operating fighters like the Shenyang J-5 and Shenyang J-6, domestically produced versions of the USSR’s MiG-17 and MiG-19, respectively. The PLAAF served mainly as a defense force, although it would frequently engage with the Taiwanese Air Force along the Taiwan Strait.
The government-sponsored watch production eventually became known as Sea-Gull. Today, the company exports watches globally and has found a niche following in the collecting community. A version of the 1963 Chronograph is still produced and has garnered attention as an affordable way to acquire a watch with genuine military history. The China of today, with its socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics, is undoubtedly much different from the China of the ’60s during the Cultural Revolution. Now there’s a pathway for profiting from what was once a tool only the military had access to.
While the 1963 Chronograph dominates the conversation around Chinese military pilots’ watches, it’s the Shanghai Watch Factory SS2 and SS4 that epitomize the Chinese military dive watch. Around the same time as the need for a Chronograph emerged, so did the need for a reliable watch that could stand up to austere environments, particularly those requiring high water resistance. China has close to 9,000 miles of coastline, and during the development phase of the SS2 and SS4, the People’s Liberation Army Navy was shifting from a coastal defense force to an emerging global naval power through heavy investment and restructuring.
The watch follows the same format as just about any dive watch: a clear, legible dial paired with a rotating bezel to track elapsed time. It also featured 200m of water resistance, which was a significant achievement for a fledgling watch producer at the time.
The “expedition watch”, as it’s come to be known, features a pared-down dial without a turning bezel, and the expression of this concept to come out of China was the Seagull ST5. A number of these watches were issued to the team that established China’s presence in Antarctica. A team of 591 Chinese expedition members traveled to Antarctica in 1984 to begin construction of the Great Wall Station on King George Island, which is still operational today.
Red Rus: Soviet Era Military Watches To Today’s Russian Military Watches
There’s beauty in functionality, but Soviet-era military vehicles and aircraft certainly push the limits when it comes to that notion with their polarizing designs. The watches of the time were no different. The design and engineering philosophy was simple: make something just robust enough to stand up to the rigors of hard wear, but cheap enough that it could be mass-produced by a state-owned enterprise. Little attention was paid to refinement and finishing, because when one watch broke, there was another ready to take its place. Accuracy wasn’t held in particularly high regard, either.
But they did what they needed to do well enough to keep a Cold War power on time. Like the TU-95 Bear or the UAZ 469, there’s a certain intrigue to engineering born in the Soviet era, partly because it was so antithetical to Western ideals. Communism created a production philosophy that de-emphasized longevity and ultimate quality. There was virtually no competition, just a number of state-owned watch producers making watches, and “consumers” (in this case, the military) had no freedom of choice. The most well-known watchmakers born in Soviet times were Vostok, Raketa, and Poljot.
And yet, these watches serve as fascinating insight into a state that sent the US into the Space Race, caused the Red Scare, and shifted the view on global nuclear destruction from a dystopian fantasy to a very real possibility. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few iconic Soviet/Russian military watches.
Vostok Amphibia
The Amphibia was initially conceived as a Soviet military dive watch but ended up becoming a fixture in modern mainstream collecting culture thanks to its on-screen appearance in the movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, worn by Bill Murray. The first watches produced under the brand name Vostok came about in the mid-50s, and the company flourished during the Cold War as a leading producer of watches for the USSR Ministry of Defense.
During WWII, the watchmaking industry was ordered to relocate from Moscow due to the possible threat of invasion and attack on industrial targets. The watchmaking industry was tasked with making bomb timers, aircraft instrumentation, and fuse-delay mechanisms for wartime efforts, so the relocation was part of a wartime strategy. The Second Moscow Watch Factory was set up far to the East of Moscow, and that morphed into the Chistopol Watch Factory, which eventually became Vostok in the mid-50s.
The Amphibia isn’t a singular model, but rather a family of watches that emerged in the late ’60s. There are dozens of different variations under the Amphibia name, with different case designs, dials, bracelets, and automatic or manual-winding movements. Most of them, however, share one interesting feature: a “compressor” case. What distinguishes a compressor case from a standard dive watch case is in the way it’s designed to resist water; becoming more impervious to water ingress the deeper it goes.
This is because it “compresses” under pressure, squeezing the gaskets in such a way that the case becomes more watertight the deeper it goes. This isn’t unique to the Vostok Amphibia, however, and the term is generally associated with the Super Compressor watch cases manufactured by EPSA and utilized by numerous Swiss watchmakers during the 60s and 70s.
In one iteration or another, from the Soviet to the modern era, Vostok Amphibia watches have been used by Russian military divers.
Vostok Komandirskie
Almost all Komandirskie models—like the Amphibia, it’s a family rather than a single model—share several attributes: They don’t hack, the power reserve is a meager 36 hours, the date doesn’t have a quick-set mechanism, and the bezel, like the Amphibia, is a “friction-fit” design, meaning there is no tactile clicking. Despite all this, they’re favored by military enthusiasts for one reason: They’re cheap. And they’re cheap because they got their start being mass-produced for the military.
In 1965, the Vostok Commander, or Komandirskie, debuted. Like the name suggests, it was a watch for high-ranking military officials as opposed to folks with boots on the ground. It served as a platform for propaganda, too. Countless editions were created to celebrate various units, branches, anniversaries, characters, and Soviet military achievements. They were purportedly used as gifts to foreign dignitaries as well.
Raketa: Then & Now
Raketa is Russian for “rocket”, and the brand officially took this name as Russia gained ground in the space race after Yuri Gagarin completed the first manned space flight. Historically, plenty of Raketa watches have been made for Soviet forces and civilians, with some of the most famous examples being the 24-hour models and the “big zero” models. Particularly useful in polar environments was the 24-hour format, due to the irregular nature of sunrise and sunset at extreme latitudes. The expedition members of the 16th Soviet Antarctic expedition were issued a model specifically developed for the task, and in classic Soviet watch fashion, the art on the dial is a not-so-subtle nod to the intended use of the watch.
One of the hallmarks of Raketa watches is the “0” or “00” at the typical twelve o’clock position. There’s a legend, the stock and trade of many Swiss brands’ marketing departments, that Mikhail Gorbachev said, “it’s like on my watch, the Russian people want to start everything from zero,” when commenting on the dawn of the Perestroika era.
In Russia’s modern mixed-market economy (generally a free market with guardrails put on by the government as well as support), Raketa lives on. But today, it utilizes modern marketing tactics and caters to a global audience. In short, it operates like any other watch brand.
The Imperial Peterhof Factory, the brand manufacturing the watch that Putin has been seen wearing the past few years, is made in the same factory as Raketa watches in St. Petersburg. It’s important to note that the brand emerged only in recent history, but can loosely count the previous 300 years of craftsmanship happening in the eponymous Petrodvorets Watch Factory as part of its horological history.
Soviet times couldn’t accommodate a “luxury” company of this sort, so naturally, it’s a young haute horology brand that puts forth Russia’s modern horological capabilities. Before the October Revolution in 1917, there was an incredibly strong emphasis on craftsmanship and micromechanical engineering in the Russian Empire, so there is some legitimate history and tradition to draw upon.
Final Thoughts
Despite at times harsh comparisons to Western watchmaking standards, the military watches of China and Russia are more than crude tools or cheap imitations of Swiss icons; they are artifacts of states that define themselves in opposition to the West. To dismiss them outright as unrefined is to miss the point: their very austerity tells us something about the societies that produced them, just as much as a Rolex GMT-Master on the wrist of a Naval Aviator says something about ours.
Whether strapped to a Russian combat diver under the ice in Murmansk, a PLAAF pilot in 1966, or today on Vladimir Putin himself, these watches remain small but telling signals in the larger contest for global power. For watch collectors and casual observers alike, they are reminders that timekeeping, like geopolitics, is never neutral.
* * *
Here’s more from Watches Of Espionage…
* * *
