Russia to expand arms export despite unfavorable environment: official

Russia would strengthen military-technical cooperation with other counties by expanding arms export in 2015, despite Western sanctions, a senior defense official said Friday.

"Russia's future defense export contracts amounts to 48 U.S. billion dollars, while the country exported arms worth over 15.5 billion dollars in 2014," Alexander Fomin, head of the ministry's military-technical cooperation agency, told a meeting at the Federation Council, the parliament's upper chamber.

Russia has signed 90 arms export deals, with production of aviation industry dominating the export structure, he said.

"(Military) aircraft delivery amounted to 44 percent (of the export)," he added.

The country plans to sign military-technical cooperation agreements with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Cameroon this year.

The official noted Russia has also sold abroad used military equipment for over 1.3 billion dollars.

In 2014, Russia remained the second largest arms exporter right next to the United States, with major customers including India, Iraq, China, Vietnam and Venezuela.

According to Fomin, the situation of arms export could become more complicated in 2015 due to Western sanctions and disruption of intra-industry links between Russian and Ukrainian defense enterprises.

Meanwhile, Alexander Brindikov, a senior advisor of state military-technical exports agency Rosoboronexport, pointed out that Russia has to give up about 30 sectors of the global arms market because of the low competitiveness in particular products.

President Vladimir Putin vowed in late January to continue the expansion of Russian presence on the markets of arms in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Putin stressed that the export of high technology military products was of great significance to Russia. Endi