MOSCOW, July 31 (UPI) — A Russian official said France has agreed to pay compensation to Russia for halting the sale of two warships.
France stopped the sale after the outbreak of the conflict in eastern Ukraine last year.
“The negotiations are completely finished, everything has already been decided, both the time frame and the amount,” Vladimir Kozhin, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told RIA Novosti. “I hope that in the very near future an agreement will be signed on breaking the contract, and then the sum that France will pay us will be announced.”
The sum of the compensation was to include the amount Russia had spent on special training for 400 sailors, port infrastructure in Vladivostok for the two warships, as well as developing four prototype Ka-52K helicopters.
The first of the two helicopter carriers was supposed to be delivered to Russia last October.
The contract for the two Mistral-class warships dates back to a June 2011 agreement worth $1.3 billion reached under France’s previous president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed additional sanctions to Russian and Ukrainian officials.
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