Kremlin breaks new ground as it lines up deal to buy French carrier

Published on Wednesday 26 August 2009 22:10

RUSSIA plans to buy a warship from France, in what would be the country's first major foreign military purchase and its first such deal with a Nato member.

General Nikolai Makarov, the chief of Russia's general staff, said that before the end of the year, the navy planned to agree the purchase of a 21,300-tonne Mistral-class helicopter carrier.

It will be Russia's biggest one-off, post-Soviet purchase of weapons abroad – the Kremlin has traditionally been protective of domestic arms producers.

"I believe not a single country in the world is capable of producing everything at the highest technological level," the general told reporters.

He declined to give a cost for the carrier, which can carry helicopters, armed vehicles and tanks for thousands of miles to launch amphibious assaults.

But he said he hoped to follow up on the one-carrier deal by organising joint Russian-French production of similar ships.

The Kremlin has made re-equipping Russia's 1.1 million-strong armed forces a priority after last year's war in Georgia revealed big problems with hardware and electronic equipment.

The appearance of Nato warships in the Black Sea during the war highlighted the problems of Moscow's Soviet-era navy. And a series of accidents, including the sinking of the Nerpa submarine last year with the loss of 20 crew and five failed tests of a new intercontinental missile have exposed serious problems with Russian military technology.