Russia and Malaysia to sign large arms deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to strengthen Russia's sensational breakthrough to the Malaysian military market during his visit to this country on August 4. A $900m deal, which envisages supplies of 18 Su-30MKM fighters to Malaysia over the next five years, is to be signed in Kuala Lumpur. Among other Asian countries that have bought such combat aircraft are China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia (the latter bought only 4 jets for $100m). Malaysia will have the third largest contract among them. Cooperation with Malaysia has revealed a lot of problems that need to be solved to promote the military and economic development of Russia, the Vremya Novostey newspaper reported. One of them is the competitiveness between different Russian defense enterprises. In particular, in the mid 1990s Malaysia bought 18 MiG 29SE fighters worth $615m from Russia and had a lot of problems with post-sale servicing. Due to the competitiveness between Russian suppliers of aircraft components, Malaysia even had to disassemble some MiGs to get components for other MiG fighters. According to international standards, components to the supplied vehicles or aircraft should be delivered within about 24 to 48 hours. The final decision on the monopoly right of the company MiG to sell components of its products was adopted at a government level. When promoting Su-30s to the Malaysian market, Russians for the first time took into account world politics and geopolitical strategy. For example, Russian experts suggested countries of this region that they should buy A-50 reconnaissance aircraft. Earlier, such proposals would be considered absurd. Is it possible that Asians would start buying Russian military products? However, after the USA's invasion to Iraq, it could become real, taking into account negative attitude of South Asian countries to Washington's policy.