The current global situation puts arms suppliers in a rather difficult situation. Many countries, including Russia, are bound by obligations for the supply of weapons. Today, however, such commitments must either be urgently revised or abandoned altogether.
The problem lies in the so-called wave of Arab revolutions, which began to "cover" the world from the end of last year. Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Libya - this is just a small list of states, contracts with which were concluded, but it was either simply impossible to fulfill them in connection with the decisions of the UN Security Council, or these contracts had to be suspended indefinitely. If not long ago our "defense industry" received substantial replenishment by financing production from Yemen, Syria, Iran and other countries, today the supply of various types of weapons to these countries had to either be reduced or stopped altogether. One of the examples of the termination of the supply of Russian weapons abroad may be the situation with the S-300 complexes, the transfer of which to Iran Russia was forced to stop in accordance with the imposed embargo on the supply of almost all types of weapons to this Arab country. And this is far from an isolated case. Russian manufacturers and suppliers of weapons to foreign partners are forced to incur serious losses. At the same time, arms manufacturers in Russia often rightly fail to understand what business has to do with politics.
If you look at this problem from the point of view of the development of the modern market, then the imposed bans on the supply of goods, and weapons are goods, in their essence, are gross interference of third parties in the partner business. At the same time, arms suppliers are outraged by the fact that bans are imposed not only on the conclusion of future contracts, what else they could understand, but also on the implementation of agreements already concluded. In such a situation, it is quite possible to admit that the world today is in a state where concluded transactions can be blocked by persons or institutions that do not represent any of the parties to these transactions. With this approach, having a lobby in certain circles, one can quite easily eliminate one's direct competitors and seize product markets under very loud cries about the struggle for disarmament in a particular territory.
If we talk about the situation in Libya, then for Russia it becomes obvious that the supply of weapons at the same level to this state will not be carried out. By the way, there are still enough analysts in the world who explain why France at one time decided to take over the reins of the NATO operation under the romantic name “Odyssey. Dawn . In the global political behind the scenes, there are persistent rumors that Sarkozy was simply extremely annoyed that Colonel Gaddafi refused to buy French weapons, and began to consider options for concluding contracts with Russia. Along with oil and gas interests, this factor can also be called quite viable.
Today, Russia is under strong pressure with the help of the Western media regarding the supply of weapons to Syria. American and British journalists, moreover, not always expressing only their point of view, accuse Moscow of “sponsoring” the regime of President Assad. And again we get that someone is trying to put pressure not even on the state, but on business. The same Americans like to reproach Russia for excessive pressure on the subjects of business contacts, but what then are they doing in this situation? It would be interesting to see how the "Stars and Stripes" would react if they suddenly propose at the UN Security Council to impose an embargo on arms supplies to Israel. In such a situation, Israel is no different from the same Syria. Israeli troops are constantly bombing Palestinian civilian settlements - which is not a reason for a ban on the import of weapons for Tel Aviv. However, in this case, one can imagine the scale of Western hysteria … By the way, when Colonel Gaddafi was at the helm of Libya, British companies did not hesitate to supply his regime with weapons for very impressive sums. And today journalists from Foggy Albion “stigmatize” Russia, China and other states for similar agreements. Absurd!..
So, Russia's income due to bans on the import of weapons into certain countries in the past 8 months of this year alone fell by several billion dollars. If over the past year the sale of arms abroad has managed to "extract" almost 12 billion "green", then the results of this year will be less joyful for Russian arms manufacturers.
In this regard, the country's leadership and domestic arms manufacturers need to develop new non-standard approaches to implement the planned programs for the supply of weapons abroad. If such measures are not taken in the near future, then the West can simply "remove" our country from the world arms market, using any possible means for this.
