The approximate amount of money that France has officially reimbursed Russia for undelivered Mistral helicopter carriers has become known. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the total cost to France of reimbursing Russia for cancelling the two warship contracts will be less than 1.2 billion euros. A contract was signed in 2011, according to which Moscow paid 1.12 billion euros, RIA Novosti reports.
Yesterday the Kremlin press service informed that the compensation is being paid and the question of the helicopter carriers is fully resolved.
The deputy director of the IMEMO of the RAS, Alexei Kuznetsov, told Vestnik Kavkaza that it was originally a political deal: "It was about the development of military-technical, economic contacts between Russia and France. First, France demonstrated that it is an unreliable supplier of arms. Considering that we are competing with France, it is to our advantage that EU Member States are unreliable suppliers, it's beneficial for us," the expert said.
"Secondly, we are satisfied with the size of the penalties. France will cover all of our costs. Therefore, it is a pure loss to France from an economic point of view. That is, they think like "let us be punished, but we also will do bad things to Russia," Alexei Kuznetsov said.
"France built these two ships very quickly," the editor-in-chief of 'Military-Industrial Courier' and the magazine 'Aerospace Defense', Michael Khodarenok, said. "If these ships were sent to the Russian Navy, of course they would strengthen our forces, because we haven't got ships of that class."
With regard to the financial component, he said that the deal did not cause any damage to Russia: "The only thing we have lost are these ships. But there are two lessons. The first is that we shouldn't create such bulk orders in the defense industry, which can lead to ambiguous situations. And the second is to develop our own naval assault force," Michael Khodarenok concluded.
