Kremlin: Turkey to take loan from Russia to purchase S-400 missile systems
A portion of the funds for Turkey’s purchase of an S-400 system from Russia will apparently be taken on loan from Russia, Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov told reporters on Tuesday.
“The discussion of technical matters is complete, but it is still necessary to deal with purely administrative matters. On the one hand, the Turkish government needs to make a decision, and on the other hand, we must make [it]. But there is also the financial question: the Turkish authorities are holding negotiations with our Finance Ministry, some funds they will find themselves, others they will receive on loan,” Chemezov said at the MAKS-2017 air show.
Vladimir Kozhin, Aide to the Russian President on matters of military-technical cooperation, announced earlier that the contract to ship Turkey S-400 missile systems had been agreed on, but the matter of a loan had not yet been decided.
Earlier Rostec’s director of international collaboration and regional policy Viktor Kladov informed TASS that Russia and Turkey had already agreed on the technical parameters of the contract to ship the S-400 systems. At the same time he specified that the contract itself had not yet been signed, and that the parties were discussing non-technical aspects of the deal. “There are commercial matters, there are currency and financial matters, there are political matters,” Kladov observed.
The S-400 Triumph is a long-range surface-to-air missile system adopted by the Russian Army in 2007. It is strike aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including those of medium-range, and can be used against ground targets. In April, Deputy Commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces Viktor Gumenny announced that the Army began receiving S-400 missile systems capable of destroying targets in near space.