What will France do to Mistrals?

France sent documents on breach of contract on Mistrals to Moscow. Paris offers €785 mln to the Russian Ministry of Defence as an indemnity for the project suspension. However, according to the estimations of a number of experts, the sum is not quite reasonable. The Russian Ministry expects to get more than a billion euro. But to agree even to these figures that France pointed out is not so easy. Moscow should allow selling the ships to any third party, according to the partners. While the risks are proposed to be shared equally by Paris.

Sergey Ermakov, deputy director of the The Taurida Information and Analysis Center of RISS:

"It is clear that there can be force majeure circumstances. In this case France breaches the contract mainly on political reasons, where the reason of the breach of contract is the situation in Ukraine. It shall be reminded that France along with Germany and Poland acted as a guarantor of the conflict settlement and gave guarantees to then President of Ukraine Yanukovich. That is, it is that crisis of confidence that people on the West so like to speak about."

How should Russia react?

Sergey Ermakov, deputy director of the The Taurida Information and Analysis Center of RISS: 

"Apart from Mistrals, we can recollect some European projects on A400 transport aircraft. The same - there was no progress, when joint works were attempted to be implemented and that lead to nowhere. That is, we should very carefully approach such cooperation with the Western and NATO countries in military and technical spheres. It's the first point. And what about namely Mistrals, there should be claims for the maximum possible compensations. But I don't think though that it will exceed 1 bln sum in any case."