Russia’s top general said Wednesday that the military wants to buy a French helicopter carrier, has deployed advanced air defense systems on the border with North Korea and will press ahead in developing the beleaguered Bulava missile.
Colonel General Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the General Staff, also said negotiations have resumed with the United States to set up a Moscow-based joint control center to track missile launches.
In what would be a landmark deal, the military plans to buy a Mistral-class helicopter carrier — capable of carrying 16 helicopters, 40 tanks or up to 900 troops — and then jointly produce three or four additional carriers with France in Russian shipyards, Makarov said.
“Before the year’s end, we plan to obtain contract agreements with a French company allowing the construction and purchase of this ship,” Makarov told reporters in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, where he was traveling with President Dmitry Medvedev.
This would be the biggest foreign military purchase for Russia, which for many years has relied on the Soviet-era principle of producing every piece of military equipment — from a pistol cartridge to a ballistic missile — domestically.
France’s navy has two of the 21,300-ton carriers in service, and one more is under construction at the Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire dockyards.
Speculation that the military was interested in buying the helicopter carrier, which costs about $1 billion, first surfaced in Vedomosti and Kommersant last month, but Russian officials denied the reports.
Several defense analysts have questioned the expediency of such a costly purchase in the name of national security. Any military conflicts likely to involve Russia would be with its neighbors, which would require land troops and equipment rather than a sea vessel, they say.
Makarov also said the military has put a division of its most advanced S-400 Triumf air defense systems in service in the Far East to intercept possible “unsuccessful launches of North Korean missiles and to guarantee that fragments of this missile don’t fall on Russian territory.”
A S-400 division comprises four to six missile systems that can track and destroy aircraft and missiles at a range of up to 400 kilometers.
North Korea caused international outrage by conducting a nuclear test in May, followed by weeks of test launches of short- and medium-range missiles. In 2006, during similar test launches, a North Korean missile veered off course and reportedly splashed into Russian coastal waters near the Far East port of Nakhodka.
“We are concerned that North Korea’s testing field, including for nuclear devices, is located quite near the Russian border,” Makarov said Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Makarov also said Moscow and Washington were discussing the creation of the joint monitoring center that would be used to notify each other about “unsanctioned” missile launches in order to avoid accidents.
The two sides discussed opening a similar center in 2000, but the idea was put on the back burner as relations worsened.
Setting up the mutually needed facility would be a good start for broader negotiations on nuclear arms that were launched by Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year, said Vladimir Yevseyev, a security analyst at the Institute of Global Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Makarov said the sides are considering the location for the center — he proposed Moscow — and would then determine the construction schedule.
Makarov reiterated the official stance on the Bulava naval intercontinental ballistic missile, saying the
military would stick to developing it even though six of its 11 test launches failed.
Makarov said the problem with the Bulava was not a faulty design but mistakes made during its production. He said, without elaborating, that another plant would work on producing Bulavas. The missiles, which can carry 10 nuclear warheads, were reportedly produced by the Votkinsky Plant in the republic of Udmurtia in the Urals. They are widely seen as Russia’s effort to narrow a growing gap between its and the United States’ strategic nuclear arsenals.
Makarov said the Borei-class nuclear submarines that were designed to carry the Bulava would not be refitted to carry the Sineva, a naval ICBM already in service. The first Borei-class submarine started sea tests last month, and two others are under construction at the Severodvinsk shipyard.
Separately, Makarov told reporters that the Arctic Sea freighter supposedly seized by pirates and then freed by the Navy would be thoroughly searched upon arrival at the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in early September.
“We need to make sure that, in fact, nothing but timber was in this vessel. The motives for hijacking are unclear,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Investigative Committee chief also promised that the ship would be examined in Novorossiisk.
It was unclear why investigators needed to wait for the ship to arrive in Novorossiisk to examine it. The Investigative Committee sent a team to the ship when it was seized by the Navy off the Cape Verde islands on Aug. 17.
The Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the ship had already been inspected and no suspicious cargo was found.