Russia armed by NATO?!
Author: Story by Irakli Aladashvili, Editor-in-chief of the military analytical magazine “Arsenali”
The French Foreign Ministry confirmed this week that it sold the Mistral type large military vessel to Russia. Russia intends to build three more Mistrals by itself. Presumably, Moscow paid 500 million euro.
“Had we had a Mistral type vessel during the 2008 war, the Black Sea fleet would complete its mission in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours as it was,” these are the words of Admiral Vladimer Visotsky, Russia’s navy fleet chief. The Russia-Georgia war woke Kremlin up to a certain extent. It saw that despite the big advantage over the Georgian army, the serious faults of the Russian armed forces became obvious and, unlike the Georgian troops, the armies of other countries would use it on the battlefield in their own interests. After the August war the Russian armed forces overtly started purchasing military machinery, equipment and technologies abroad.
The Russian army bought several types of drones, planned to purchase electro-chemic generator technologies for submarines from Germany and is waiting for a huge loader helicopter from France.
Mistral is a descent vehicle-dock, full displacement of which makes 21,300 tons. It serves the function of a small air carrier – 16 helicopters can be placed on its deck. Although according to the current agreement air carriers are banned from the Black Sea, but Mistral can be viewed as a descent-helicopter carrier vessel and Russia will not find it difficult to bring it to the Sevastopol navy base. Length of Mistral is 199 m, speed – 18.8 knots, distance of economic movement is more than 10 thousand miles. It is equipped with two zenith-missile complexes “Simbad”, two 30 mm anti-aircraft guns and four 12.7 mm machine guns. However, this armament is not the most important.
If Russia purchases Mistral type descent vessel-dock (currently France owns two such vessels and is building the third one) and brings it in the Black Sea, then Moscow will be able to quickly deploy 450 marine soldiers and 13 tanks on the Georgian coast, which is a significant power to occupy a specific strategic site, such as Poti military port or Supsa oil terminal.
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