Moscow and Caracas continue negotiations on the supply of new weapons, and Russia is ready to continue to help the Latin American republic in strengthening its defense capability. This was announced on Tuesday, June 22, by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"As for whether Russia is ready to continue to provide assistance to Venezuela, including in the field of strengthening defense capabilities, we are not that ready, we have never stopped it. The Venezuelan army has been supplied with Russian systems of military products, our specialists work there, who, in accordance with the contract, regularly carry out the necessary measures to maintain this equipment," Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza.
The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry added that the countries continue negotiations on the supply of new shipments of various types of weapons.
In February, the general director of Rosoboronexport, Alexander Mikheev, said that Russia is constantly expanding military-technical cooperation with foreign countries, despite Western sanctions.
Russia consistently ranks second in the world in terms of arms exports. In March 2020, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported in a report that from 2015 to 2019, the global arms trade increased by 5.5% compared to the period 2010-2014. The main arms exporters remain the United States and Russia.
It was noted that the share of Russia's military exports over the past five years amounted to 21% of the world volume. During this period, 47 countries acquired Russian weapons. The regional distribution is as follows: 55% of all sales were to India, China and Algeria, 57% - to Asia and Oceania, 19% - to the Middle East (mainly Egypt and Iraq), 17% - to Africa, 5.7% of weapons were delivered to Europe and 0.8% - to North and South America.
