Russia Is on the Second Place in Lies about Arms Sale

Russia is on the second place in the world on volume of arms export, the president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin declared making public speech at the meeting of commission of military technical cooperation.

"Russia occupies the second place in the world on volume of arms export", - Putin provided data of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, having specified that it makes 24% of the world export. The USA, according to its data, makes 30% of volume of arms, Germany - 9%, France - 8%. According to him, today our equipment and systems of arms are bought by 55 countries. "Including India, Algeria, China, Vietnam, Venezuela and the USA, in total military-technical cooperation is carried out with more than 80 states of the world", - Putin noted.

However the deputy director of "Rosoboronexport" Victor Komardin told at the arms exhibition DSA-2012 in Malaysia: "The central Europe is lost, North Africa is lost, China is leaving, Iran has already left. These are serious losses, but our export all the same grows". Certainly, Putin is the chief but obviously Komardin, nevertheless, knows better what markets we lost.

Why is export growing, if production is falling and we are losing the markets? Export of the Russian military production in the first half of 2012 is 14% higher indicators of the same period of last year was reported by the president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

Well, firstly, markets are in general falling: last year global financial and economic crisis essentially affected sales of arms worldwide, newspaper New York Times writes referring to the data of the congress of the USA. On its data, in 2010 arms sales made 40,4 billion dollars that is 38% less than the sum of transactions in 2009 which reached 65,2 billion dollars. As the newspaper notes, the lowest indicator since 2003 was noted last year.

However the USA kept dominant positions in the world market of arms, having signed contracts valued at sum of 21,3 billion dollars in 2010. Thus, Americans possess more than a half, namely 52,7%, of all world transactions in the field of arms traffic, though in 2009 the sum of the American contracts made 22,6 billion dollars.

Experts in the congress of the USA allocate the second place in worldwide arms sales to Russia. According to their data, the sum of the Russian contracts made 7,8 billion dollars or 19,3% of arms market, though in 2009 that indicator was higher - 12,8 billion dollars in 2010, the newspaper notes.

So, the sum of contracts of the Russian Federation in 2010 is only 7,8 bln. dollars. While above-mentioned Komardin gave absolutely different figures in Malaysia: Russia, following the results of 2011, sold abroad arms and military equipment for the sum of 13,2 billion dollars, a year before - 10,4 billion. So, 10,4 or 7,8?

Well, I will also remind you that at the times of the USSR we also were on the second place after the USA, only the volume of our arms export was estimated in 18 bln. dollars against 40 billion of the USA – let’s note of "those" dollars which were at least 2 times "heavier".

Today the USA even in weakened by inflation dollars has arms export volume approximately at a level of the former USSR, while Russia - almost three times less (if to trust the Americans, not to the lies of our supreme officials). We lost almost all markets, having kept only minor consumers. We will continue losing them as we lag behind not offering new samples of equipment, we remain in the market generally at the expense of low price for our weapon.

If to speak about competition of the quality, I will remind - for the first time for tens years Russia started purchases of foreign arms because of poor quality of products of military and industrial complex and full loss of a number of technologies. Unless it’s not necessary to deduct expenses of the budget on these purchases of foreign arms from the income from sale of our cheap but poor-quality weapon to the poor countries?

So, what’s the matter, what’s the reason of lies about our imaginary successes?

Probably, the answer to this question is a letter of the head of Institute of Economy of RAS Ruslan Grinberg addressed to Vladimir Putin where expediency of privatization is called in question.

“On my deep belief privatization of the state shares in key for the country companies... has ideological character and is obviously premature in present conditions of a world financial distemper”, — the academician writes.

So, may be this lie about successes of military and technical cooperation and defensive industry as a whole is simply preselling preparation of domestic military industrial complex to the foreign companies? Not casually it’s very difficult to find "untimely" letter of the academician in network...

Anatoly Baranov, editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk

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