Yerevan in panic: Moscow desires to supply modern aircraft to Baku

By Azernews

By Abdul Kerimkhanov

Yerevan continues buying weapons from Russia for huge loans in an effort to be able oppose Azerbaijan in an event of new clashes in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

Armenia persistent efforts to pursue an arms race with Azerbaijan sometimes plunge in panic. The matter is that Azerbaijan leads successful military-technical cooperation with Russia. 

The recent media reports urged on large-scale deliveries of Russian modern weapons to Armenia. The former Soviet nation in particular boasted of the Russian Su-30SM. However, unfortunately for the Armenian side, it became known on July 1 that Russia is ready to sell even more modern aircraft to Azerbaijan.

Meetings have been held with the delegation of the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan, where representatives of Russia’s United Aircraft Building Corporation informed Azerbaijan of their current plans.

Russia stated its readiness to sell any types of combat aircraft to Azerbaijan. The SU-34 and SU-35 aircraft were demonstrated at the Army-2019 forum to the Azerbaijani delegation. Russia expressed its readiness to begin negotiations on the export of these combat aircraft to Azerbaijan.

Armenia, just inspired by the supply of modern fighters and hoping to seize the advantage in the Karabakh sky, now will again remain the lagging side. Armenia feels offended that Yerevan had to ask Russia for the supply of these aircraft, while Russia itself offered the military products to the Azerbaijani delegation.

“Despite Moscow still considers Yerevan its strategic ally, the Kremlin is not just ready to sell weapons to Baku, but even asks it to acquire these aircraft,” some media reports noted.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan presented military-industrial complex products at the 5th International Military-Technical Forum "Army-2019" in Moscow.

Azerbaijan brought to Moscow samples of small arms - machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-tank grenade launchers, ammunition for small arms and melee weapons, as well as light artillery. The military specialists were interested in two sniper rifles of Azerbaijan production. The first one has 7.62 caliber 51 mm with a range of 1,000 meters. It is mass-produced for the security forces of the state and is offered for export. The second one, a semi-automatic rifle for caliber 7.62 by 54 mm, was commissioned by the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan.

Yahya Musayev, Deputy Minister of Defense Industry, during the Forum stated that industrial cooperation, established during the existence of the Soviet Union, as well as the production infrastructure in Azerbaijan contributes to sufficiently close cooperation between Moscow and Baku.

Musayev said Azerbaijan is paying increased attention to organizing its own production of weapons and military equipment.

"We also produce defense products, for example, small arms, which we export, as well as ammunition. For the defense industry, which was born relatively recently, this is a significant success. We even supply defense products to some NATO countries," Musayev stressed.

The reaction of the new Armenian authorities will be interesting. Although it can be assumed that Yerevan will blackmail Moscow, threatening to buy weapons from Washington; thereby completely emptying Armenia's budget.