Yerevan June 19
Marianna Mkrtchyan. Moscow wants to supply Yerevan with Su-30SM fighter jets before 2024. As Kommersant informs before the change of power in Armenia the Defense Ministry had postponed the purchase of Russian multi-fucntional Su-30SM fighter jets till 2024.
The contract, implying the delivery of at least one squadron to the Armenian Air Force, was signed in 2012, but never came into force due to the financial difficulties of the customer. According to "Kommersant", Russia expects to implement the agreement with the new leadership of Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has already sat in the cockpit of the Su-30SM and called the fighter "one of the best in the world."
Kommersant reports that talks about Armenia's desire to acquire Su-30SM resumed after Nikol Pashinyan posted a photo on the Facebook social network in which he is in the cockpit of an airplane located at the Erebuni military airport (where the 3624th Russian airbase is located). He did not provide any additional details, nor did he comment on his actions in the Defense Ministry of Armenia. However, according to military expert Leonid Nersisyan, negotiations on Yerevan's purchase of a certain number of Su-30SM "are in a rather advanced stage," signing a contract in case of successful and fortunate conjunction of circumstances is expected within the next one or two years. "Rosoboronexport", however, informed "Kommersant" that they do not have any information about this.
Several top managers of the aviation industry told Kommersant that the Armenian military began to show interest in the Su-30SM aircraft back in 2010 because of the need to upgrade the Air Force fleet (they are based on Soviet Su-25 and Su-27, most of which need capital repair and modernization). Moreover, approximately in 2012, Moscow and Yerevan signed a contract, under terms of which Armenia would receive at least 12 fighters for several years (the authorization for their delivery, according to Kommersant, was given by Vladimir Putin). But the agreement did not come into force due to the financial difficulties of the customer.
Since then, the parties have periodically and unsuccessfully discussed the prospects for the practical implementation of the contract. Moreover, in addition to planes (Moscow tried to solve the financial problem of Yerevan, allowing it to buy planes on Russian domestic, rather than export prices), Armenia needed to purchase other weapons. For example, Yerevan became the first export recipient of the division of the newest operational-tactical Iskander missile complex, and it also acquired weapons worth $ 300 million using Russian loans.
According to Kommersant's information, the parties returned to the topic of procurement of Su-30SM a few months before the revolution in Armenia, leading to the replacement of the prime minister (instead of Serzh Sargsyan, Nikol Pashinyan) and renewing the power section of the Cabinet. It was at this meeting that representatives of the Armenian Defense Ministry told the Russian negotiators that the purchase of the previously contracted jets was postponed for six years, that is until 2024. According to Kommersant's sources in the field of military-technical cooperation, there were no active contacts between the specialists of the two countries after the revolution and the change of power.
But certain signals for the expansion of military-technical cooperation have already been received: Mr. Pashinyan said openly on May 23 that during the talks with Mr. Putin the parties agreed to make cooperation "more effective." And the new Minister of Defense, David Tonoyan, has been dealing with arms issues in the military department in recent years, maintaining good contacts with the Russian defense industry.