Decision on purchase of ships of "Mistral" type in France is "ridiculous", it caused loss to ship-building branch and to the state, the first deputy of Military-industrial Commission affiliated to the government of the Russian Federation Ivan Harchenko declared. "It is Serdyukov's initiative. It’s not the only loss which he caused to the branch and the state", - Harchenko told at the meeting of the League to Support Defense Industry in Moscow.
The contract worth 1,2 billion Euros on construction of two French Mistral helicopter carriers for the Navy of Russia was signed in June, 2011. The first ship will come into operation of the Russian fleet in 2014.
- Stop, stop, stop here! - the editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk Anatoly Baranov jumped up on a chair. – Don’t kid around with me, misters! Serdyukov, of course, is very far from perfection, but the contract on "Mistrals" was beyond the range of his competence! Our Military-Industrial Commission affiliated to the government is headed not by the Minister of Defense, but more significant official - at the time of acquisition of "Mistrals" it was Sergey Ivanov - the Deputy Prime Minister now heading Presidential Administration. Transactions of such level are signed by the head of state, Commander-in-Chief, then it was Dmitry Medvedev, though such event couldn’t pass by the prime minister of that time. So the circle of responsible persons are much wider, than the Ministry of Defense and is more representative, than the minister-furniture maker. Now let’s try to estimate, whether Commander-in-Chief had time to understand what was what?
Materials on the theme:
Why did Serdyukov and his clique buy landing helicopter carrier Mistral in France?
It is Maxim Kalashnikov's material of 2009 - just at that time Commander-in-Chief was fond of blogs and from time to time read that author. So, it’s impossible to say that he "did not know".
Russia will buy "Mistrals" with production not in our country
At the time of issue of that material all experts were simply squealing, there was a link to WikiLeaks under that text:
Wikileaks: September, 11 in the field of diplomacy for the USA and... shame for the Russian Federation
A "leak" from the Ministry of Defense of France is directly given here, conversation between the French Minister of Defence Hervé Moren and his American colleague Robert Gates in Paris on February, 8 is quoted: "Transaction gives incorrect signal to Russia and to our allies in the Central and Eastern Europe", - statements of Gates who noted that countries of Eastern Europe “still treat Russia carefully and don't know, if it’s possible to trust the West" are stated in the document. The Minister of Defense of France explaining position of the French party in conversation with Gates declared that transaction won't affect strengthening of military capacity of the Russian Federation and, therefore, there shouldn’t be any worries about safety.
- It is only a little bit of what was published about "Mistrals" and only on FORUM.msk, - Anatoly Baranov reminded. – There was reaction of the management - under each article the whole flow of comments from specially trained trolls accusing authors of the article of everything - from stupidity and incompetence to service in foreign intelligence services. It was reaction of the Kremlin and government office including Military-Industrial Commission. Certainly, milliard transaction is worth talking that black is white and vise versa. But having told "a", one should say “b” - who is beneficiary from transaction with "Mistrals"? Who received direct commission charges (they were, they always exist)? Who supervises companies where the orders were placed? Whose signatures stand in the routing forms - and what large acquisitions followed within a month - two after placing of those signatures?
I would like to hear to the General prosecutor...
