Russia has been exporting arms to countries including Saudi Arabia, bolstering its economy after a barrage of sanctions followed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Saudi Arabia agreed to pay sanctioned Russian arms companies more than 2-billion euros for an air defense system, according to leaked documents, reported by Occrp.org
Trade data shows that some equipment was delivered in 2023, the year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The contract was signed on 8 April, 2021, but the leaked documents show that the agreement stretches into 2026. This means the Russian defense firms have likely continued to work with Saudi Arabia even after a raft of sanctions were imposed by the European Union, the U.S. and other countries following the assault on Ukraine.
Trade data shows that, in 2023, companies named in the contract delivered trucks to Saudi Arabia. The vehicles are the same type that carry components of the air defense system, including missiles and radio communications.
Details about arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other countries are included in a trove of leaked emails and internal documents from Roselectronics, which was obtained by OCCRP and analyzed by the Kyiv Independent.
Roselectronics is a subsidiary of Rostec, a Russian state-owned defense conglomerate. Under the agreement, Saudi Arabia agreed to pay 2.2 billion euros (about $2.3 billion) to Rosoboronexport, another Rostec subsidiary, which would then transfer the funds to companies manufacturing the weaponry.
The leaked Roselectronics documents include an invoice and bank account statements that show Saudi Arabia transferred a first tranche of 326 million euros ($335 million) in August 2021. It was not possible to see evidence of further payments since the documents in the leak go only until May 2022.
Ongoing cooperation on the contract would not violate any laws in Saudi Arabia, as the country has not sanctioned the Russian firms. However, experts said Saudi individuals and entities risk getting slapped with U.S. sanctions if they do business with the Russian defense companies.
The U.S. “can impose secondary sanctions on people or companies in other countries if it believes that they have violated its sanctions,” said Agiya Zagrebelska, a sanctions expert at the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, a Kyiv-based research institute.
“There could be potentially individual sanctions," said Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that focuses on U.S. interests in the Middle East.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment about the contracts, including whether cooperation with the sanctioned Russian firms is ongoing today.
Such arms sales are important to Russia’s economy, which is struggling under sanctions. Providing weapons to certain countries also serves a diplomatic purpose, according to Borshchevskaya.
"Russia sees arms sales as another tool of statecraft. It’s a tactic," she said. “It’s a tool of influence from the Russian perspective."
The documents from Roselectronics show that, along with Saudi Arabia, countries including China, India, Algeria and Egypt have continued to make arms purchases from Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Import-export data also records these arms transfers.
Localized Production
While the contract for the Pantsir-S1M air defense system was signed in 2021, the purchase did not become public until last year, when a Saudi government publication published a photo of it, according to the Ukrainian news site Defense Express.
The Saudi government’s Air Defense Bulletin did not include any details about the purchase of the Pantsir, which can shoot down missiles, planes and drones. But far more information was revealed in the leaked documents from Roselectronics.
The Pantsir system generally operates as part of a “battery” that includes several vehicles that fire missiles and artillery. The contract shows that Saudi Arabia agreed to purchase several batteries.
The documents show that Saudi Arabia ordered 39 trucks capable of shooting down aircraft, as well as 10 vehicles housing “command posts” to direct the operations of combat vehicles. Also included in the purchase were hundreds of missiles, as well as additional vehicles.
A sanctioned Rostec subsidiary called United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation, was appointed to oversee the supply of the radio communications systems that were also purchased under the contract.
Aside from details about the purchase of the Pantsir system, the leak includes a 69-page proposal that discusses future cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the sanctioned Russian firms. The proposal outlines three potential contracts.
One contract would cover the construction of maintenance facilities, while another would create a 15,000-square-metre center in Jeddah to train personnel on using the Pantsir system. The third potential contract would include building an assembly plant in Saudi Arabia to produce Pantsir units, and ammunition.
The contract for the assembly plant was due to be signed in the second half of 2022. However, OCCRP was unable to confirm whether this or the other two additional contracts were formally agreed upon, since the leak included documents only until May 2022.
The future localization of production was a requirement by Saudi Arabia to sign the contract to purchase the Pantsir air defense systems.
Ivan Kirichevsky, a weapons expert who wrote about the deal for Defense Express, said subsequent sanctions may have undermined the plan to assemble Pantsir units and ammunition in Saudi Arabia, because Russian companies are now struggling to source components.
“There are some doubts as to whether Russians can reach the next stage of the Saudi contract — the organization of joint production,” he said in an interview after being shown the documents. “They are now highly dependent on imports of various equipment and electronic components. This may affect co-production arrangements.”
The deal may have also allowed Russia to gain knowledge of Patriot air defense systems that Saudi Arabia has acquired from the U.S. The Russian side requested and received consent to visit Saudi air defense facilities in 2022, the leaked emails show.
"Saudi Arabia is one of the major operators of Patriot systems,” said Kirichevsky. “This is a sensitive issue, whether the Russians could have gained access to them.”
Arms Deals and UN Votes
The arms deals revealed in the leak have taken on added importance since sanctions bar many companies and governments from doing business with Russia, and discourage others from doing so. But a dozen countries were still buying Russian weapons in 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Aside from bringing in state revenue, Zagrebelska, the sanctions expert at the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, said Russia sees arms sales as a way of strengthening geopolitical ties. The result of such ties can be seen in the countries’ votes at the United Nations, she added.
Saudi Arabia voted for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, and promised to provide Ukraine with $400 million in humanitarian aid. However, the country abstained from voting on more than half of the U.N. resolutions regarding Russia’s war against Ukraine. Other countries doing arms deals with Russia have also voted in that country’s favor, or abstained.
Meanwhile, Russia has been public about its desire to continue arms exports since its full-scale invasion, which came eight years after it annexed Crimea and started a war in eastern Ukraine.
In August 2022, Rosoboronexport hosted the seven-day forum in a massive facility outside of Moscow, reportedly visited by delegations from 50 countries. On display were tanks, armored vehicles, fighter aircrafts, drones and anti-drone systems, as well as air defense systems. Similar events were held in 2023 and 2024, and another convention is planned for this year.
Dmitry Shugaev, director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, reportedly said in August 2024 that export orders for arms exceed $60 billion. It is impossible to verify the figure, as the value of individual arms contracts is usually secret.
Rosoboronexport is a key company selling arms overseas, and touted its business with India in a December press release. The company had just delivered a Russian-built navy frigate, which was equipped with a “supersonic missile system,” as well as tech manufactured in India.
The frigate was only one of the deals Rosoboronexport has brokered with India, according to the company’s director general, Alexander Mikheev
“In addition, today Rosoboronexport and India are implementing about 10 joint projects on naval issues alone and are discussing several new ones," Mikheev said in the statement.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
