Updated 2:59 p.m. Moscow time
PARIS, October 27 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s first Mistral helicopter carrier will enter the country’s Naval service in 2014 and the second in 2015, the deputy director of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation said Monday.
“The Vladivostok should enter into the Russian military service in 2014, and the second, the Sevastopol, in 2015,” Anatoly Punchuk, who is heading the Russian delegation at the Euronaval-2014 exhibition in Paris, told RIA Novosti.
“The completion of the contracts in Russia and France are being completed in their full volume and in the agreed terms,” Punchuk said.
These warships are both capable of carrying 16 helicopters, four landing craft, 70 armored vehicles and 450 soldiers.
In June 2011, Russia and France signed a $1.5 billion deal for two Mistral-class helicopter carriers. The first warship, the Vladivostok, will be handed over to Russia in the coming “days of weeks,” a high-ranking representative of the shipbuilding company STX told RIA Novosti earlier in the day.
The transfer comes amid souring relations between Russia and the West following Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and Russia's alleged role in east Ukraine turmoil. In June US President Barack Obama said he was concerned that the handover would boost Russian military capabilities and pressed for Paris to reconsider its deal with Moscow.
Following the statement French President Francois Hollande threatened in September to suspend Mistral deliveries. Hollande later said he would make a decision in late October, specifying that the delivery would depend on the observation of the ceasefire by warring sides in Ukraine’s internal armed conflict and a political settlement of the crisis.
Last week, Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov said Russia will sue France if it refuses to fulfill its contract obligations on the ships' delivery. Moscow also said that if anything went wrong, the country would still be able to build a Mistral analogue by itself.
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