Posted on 05/22/2009 11:47:10 PM PDT by pobeda1945
MOSCOW, May 22 (RIA Novosti) - Bolivia may order weaponry worth several million dollars from Russia in the near future, a deputy foreign minister said on Friday. Sources earlier reported that Bolivia had expressed interest in buying a number of Russian-made Mi-17 multipurpose helicopters to combat terrorism and drug trafficking. "As to purchases of military equipment, we are interested not only in helicopters, but also in other kinds of weaponry," Hugo Fernandez told a news conference at RIA Novosti.
"Agreements on the list of military equipment which we would like to purchase have not yet been reached, but we will return to this issue in several months. We are talking about several million dollars worth of weaponry," he added.
During the talks in Moscow in February, Russia and Bolivia signed a bilateral agreement on military-technical cooperation. Moscow said it could offer La Paz a loan for the purchase of Russian-made weaponry, without specifying the amount.
However, Alexander Fomin, first deputy director of Russia's Federal Service for Military Cooperation, said on Thursday that the Russian defense industry had effectively "reached its ceiling" and could not take on any more contracts in the near future.
"The industry does not stretch like a rubber bag. As in other countries, [our industry] has its limits. That's an open secret," he said.
According to Fomin, Russia's foreign defense orders currently total $35 billion.
Everything I’ve read tells me Russia’s defense industry is dying of neglect.
What is Evo going to use for money, pray tell?
Russia would be wise to demand payment in advance.
What terrorism? Oh, those who want to keep their freedom from the mini-Marxist Morales. Okay. No problem. Let the bear into your home.
Hey, Morales you smuck. Remember what happened to Che Guevera when he came to your country for R & R?
Wrong. Russia’s defense industry has grown over the past 10 years, and is second only to the US in money, and first in manpower employed to power it. Russia has much better purchasing power for buying its weapons.
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Russia's Defense industry is at its max and has to expand, because the Russian and CIS armies, and other Russian allies are ordering so much new hardware and pushing R+D to the limit that they currently don't have any additional capacity to fill orders. That is why Russia is allowing more licenses to be sold for production within Venezuela, Cuba, and other friendly countries.
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