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MOSCOW — Russia’s foreign arms exports rose to $10.7 billion in 2011 despite a ban on weapons sales to former client Libya, the state arms export agency said Feb. 2.
The figure represents an increase from $8.7 billion in 2010, the Rosoboronexport arms agency said, according to Russian news agencies.
But it said that the arms embargo on Libya, imposed last year in line with Moscow’s support for U.N. sanctions against Moammar Gadhafi before he was ousted, seriously hit Russia’s potential export revenues.
“Because of the embargo, we have lost about $4 billion,” said Rosoboronexport’s chief executive Anatoly Isaikin, according to news agency Interfax.
He said that the main markets for Russian weapons among 57 countries supplied in 2011 included India, Venezuela and Asia-Pacific states. Air defense technology accounted for just over half of all exports.
Isaikin expressed confidence that revenues would be maintained this year.
“We managed to keep our order book at the level of $33-35 billion, and I think that this trend will continue in 2012-2013,” he said.
Also on Feb. 2, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told Russian news agencies that arms deliveries to Syria will continue despite the ongoing violence.
“As of today there are no restrictions on the delivery of weapons, and we must fulfill our obligations” Antonov said. “And this is what we are doing.”
Russia has repeatedly said that an embargo on arms exports to Syria is a red line for Moscow that cannot be crossed in any U.N. Security Council resolution on the violence.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told Australian television on Jan. 31 that Moscow was implementing its “commercial contractual obligations” to Damascus but that the arms it sold to Syria were “not used against demonstrators.”
