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MANY in the West believe that Russia’s support for Syria stems from Moscow’s desire to profit from selling arms to Bashar al-Assad’s government and maintain its naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartus. But these speculations are superficial and misguided. The real reason that Russia is resisting strong international action against the Assad regime is that it fears the spread of Islamic radicalism and the erosion of its superpower status in a world where Western nations are increasingly undertaking unilateral military interventions. Since 2005, Russian defense contracts with Syria have amounted to only about $5.5 billion — mostly to...

“This weapon is perfect for close-quarters combat, house to house,” the Russian arms dealer explains, gently passing a silencer-equipped assault rifle, the AK-104, to the official from Syria, who brings the gun’s sight level with his eye and aims it across pavilion C3 of Russia’s semiannual arms bazaar. Serving as their translator is Colonel Isam Ibrahim As’saadi, the military attaché at the Syrian embassy in Moscow, who chaperones the three officials in town from Damascus for a bit of military shopping. It is a rare opportunity for them. With their country sinking into a civil war, most of the world’s...

The State Department and some lawmakers are waxing indignant about newspaper disclosures of a secret 1995 deal between Vice President Al Gore and then-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. After the newspaper reports were published, the State Department acknowledged this week that Mr. Gore assured Russia that the United States would not sanction the Kremlin for Russian arm sales to Iran, if they stopped by 1999. But rather than acknowledge the adverse impact this underhanded arrangement could have on national security, the State Department and legislators have lashed out at the newspapers that disclosed the Gore-Chernomyrdin arrangement. "I hope this is...

Dec. 25, 2007 Liquid Arms //Arms exports hit an all-time high Russia has exported record-high $7 billion arms in 2007, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov said on Monday. Still, it came short of $1 billion as a ship construction contract with Algeria was frozen over tensions in the bilateral relations. Russian arms sales have doubled over the past seven years when arms exports have been overseen by Rosoboronexport’s former CEO and Rostekhnologia’s new director general Sergey Chemezov. Sergey Ivanov said on Monday “there are good reasons to say that this year the benchmark of $7 billion has been surpassed”...

Feb 28, 2002 -- (BBC Monitoring) Text of report by Russian news agency Ekho Moskvy. [No dateline as received] Russia is using Belarus as a "channel" for selling arms to such countries as Iraq, Iran and Libya, the former chairman of the Belarusian parliament, the leader of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, Stanistaw Shushkevich, has said in an interview for Ekho Moskvy radio. He added: "Russia is a major country and cannot break UN sanctions, but it is of course very convenient for it to have such an obliging leader by its side." "I am practically sure that it is ...

Russia came in for harsh criticism last week when state-owned jet producer MiG delivered 12 MiG-29 planes to Sudan. Amnesty International suggested that the jets could be used against civilians in Sudan's western region of Darfur, where attacks against indigenous black tribes by the government-backed Arab janjaweed militia over the last 15 months have left at least 30,000 people dead, forced villagers into refugee camps and left some 2 million people without sufficient food and medicine. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton blasted MiG for selling modern weapons to a government the United States considers a sponsor of international terrorism....

U.S. protests against Russian arms sales to Iraq WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - The United States said on Sunday it had protested to Moscow about reports that Russian firms have sold Iraq antitank missiles, night vision goggles and jamming gear. A State Department spokeswoman said Moscow's response had not been satisfactory. U.S. and British forces are fighting Iraq in an effort to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and to find and destroy Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has denied it has such weapons. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the United States recently delivered a protest to...

They say the Cold War is over, but Russia and the U.S. remain the leading supplier of weapons to countries around the world and are the two biggest military powers. Lately, tensions have been pretty high, too. The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Russia supplies many BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa.

Stockholm (AFP) - Sales by Russian arms manufacturers continue to expand thanks to Moscow's investments despite a downturn in global defence spending, a Stockholm-based think-tank said Monday. "The remarkable increases in Russian companies' arms sales in both 2012 and 2013 are in large part due to uninterrupted investments in military procurement by the Russian government during the 2000s," said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Sales by Russian-based arms firms grew by 20 percent in 2013, according to SIPRI. However, figures for the 100 biggest arms-dealing nations excluding China declined for the third year...

Turning a New Leaf in Relations: Russia’s Renewed Arms Sale to China Publication: China Brief Volume: 11 Issue: 2January 28, 2011 By: Stephen Blank Tensions in the arms sales relationship between Russia and China have been visibly on the rise in recent years. Yet, in November 2010, Moscow and Beijing announced a large new package of arms sales that appear to have turned a new leaf in this relationship. Much of the tension stemmed from the Chinese defense industry's practice of reverse engineering Russian weapons technology, indigenizing it and then reselling it in third party markets in competition with Moscow....

Russia announced that arms exports for 2009 would be $8.5 billion. That's less than two percent more than last year's $8.35 billion. This is not good. Increasing these sales is very important for the government. The defense industry employs nearly three million people and accounts for about 20 percent of industrial jobs in Russia. At the end of the Cold War in 1991, defense work was more than three times as large as it is now. It was the large size of the defense industry that played a major role in bankrupting the Soviet Union. The Russians were never quite...

Russian may sell $5 billion worth of weapons to Venezuela, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday after a visit to the South American nation. Putin met Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas on Friday to discuss oil, defense and nuclear energy cooperation, although no new no arms agreements were signed. The United States expressed concern about possible arms proliferation following such a deal with Venezuela, one its most prominent foes in the region. Chavez says his growing arsenal is aimed at countering a planned increase in the U.S. military forces in neighboring Colombia, Washington's closest ally in Latin America....

Mother Russia is also turning out to be the mother of all arms sellers. The former Cold War superpower, where crusading journalists and anti-corruption bankers are regularly bumped off gangland style and the rule of law has become a joke, has just been designated the leading exporter of arms in 2005 to developing countries by a report issued by the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the US Congress. According to the report, China, India and Iran are Russia’s best customers for its booming arms industry which took in $1.6 billion more than 2004 to reach $7 billion in sales...

(An Excerpt From Page 2 Of The Article)...“I should mention another interesting aspect. Modern-day Western arms are produced with special chips which make it impossible to use the weapons against the manufacturing country and its allies. It may mean that Saudi Arabia does not exclude a possible military confrontation with the West. Finally, Saudi Arabia does not perceive Moscow as an enemy. Quite on the contrary – it’s a potential partner,” the expert said...

ALGIERS, January 26 -- Russia is set to sell $4 billion worth of arms to Algeria, in what would be its largest post-Soviet defense export deal. "The work on the package of contracts for the delivery of a large part of Russian weapons to Algeria is practically complete, and they are likely to be signed in February," Interfax quoted an unnamed source in the defense industry. The multibillion-dollar list of weapons includes 36 MiG-29SMT and 28 Su-30 fighter jets, eight divisions of S-300MPU2 Favorit air defense systems and a batch of T-90 battle tanks, the source said. Along with the...