Russia Sells Weapons to Malaysia

Countries prefer to buy cheap and reliable Russian weapons

One may say that this week has had a pretty good start for the Russian defense industry. Russian Defense Minister Igor Ivanov and his colleague Najib Bin Abdul Razak have completed negotiations in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia today. The two ministers initialed a contract for the delivery of Russian Su-30MKM pursuit planes to Malaysia. The sum of the contract totaled some $900 million.

This contract means work and profit for many years for Russian defense enterprises. As Sergey Ivanov said, the terms of the contract stipulate further technical services of the planes as well as an opportunity of their modernization in the future. The contract with Malaysia is a foreign policy victory for Russia too. No matter what rumors American defense companies might spur, other countries prefer to buy cheap and reliable Russian weapons. If all countries had a political choice, Russian weapons would become a very serious competition for American weapons on the world market.

However, America has concentrated its power to make as many countries as possible buy American weapons, the American equipment, open more McDonald's and so on. The USA punishes the "guilty one" with a refusal to cooperate, with a refusal to assign loans, the States often deny a military support, leaving a country like that tete-a-tete with powerful terrorism organizations. Russia does not have such hypocritical restrictions. If there is someone in the world, who wishes to rearm their army with modern weapons, the Russian defense industry is always at their service. A partner may be certain that such cooperation will last long. As Minister Sergey Ivanov said, it would be a "close, long-range military and technical cooperation."

Russia television channel reported that the agreement to deliver military planes to Malaysia would be completed within the coming months. Najib Bin Abdul Razak, the Malaysian Defense Minister, stated that the transaction had been conducted within the framework of the program to modernize the Malaysian Air Force.

It should be mentioned here that South-East Asia and Oceania states have evinced such a great interest in the Russian defense technology after the war in Iraq. As it is well known, various Muslim groups are rather strong in the countries of the mentioned region. In addition to that, a lot of those countries make either real or far-fetched claims on the USA. Indonesia, another country of the South-East Asia and Oceania, has recently signed a contract with Russia to deliver four Russian army planes and four helicopters in the total sum of $192,9 million. Experts do not exclude that such a dynamic market of arms (the region includes ten countries: Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines) will become a lot more open for the military and technical cooperation with Russia. This definitely means that billions of dollars are coming to Russia from these countries in return to the security guarantee in case of an aggression.