/ world today news/ Moscow and Paris have agreed in advance the amount of the penalty that France must pay to Russia for not delivering to Moscow the Mistral-class ships it ordered and paid for, an informed source reported, RIA Novosti reported .
“In June, the two sides were able to reach a preliminary, agreed solution on the amount of compensation that France owes Russia for refusing to deliver the ships. The decision is preliminary because now it has to be approved by the governments of both countries,” the agency’s source said.
According to him, the consultations are very active and the next round of negotiations will be held this month.
Almost at the same time, the assistant to the Russian president on matters of military-technical cooperation, Vladimir Kozhin, said that the negotiations for the ships are close to completion and that an agreement on the return of the money will be signed in the near future, within a month. “Practically all issues have already been resolved,” Kozhin announced.
At the end of last month, French media wrote that Paris was trying to reach an agreement to pay a penalty that would be less than 1 billion euros, because this amount was easier to “operate” for the French public.
The contract between the French shipbuilding company DCNS and Rosoboronexport for the construction of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers worth 1.2 billion euros was signed in 2011. Because of the crisis in Ukraine and the deteriorating relations between the EU and Russia, France refused to hand over the ships to Moscow.
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