Word: russian
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...more than 40% of global defense spending. Moscow has been particularly good at targeting buyers in the developing world. Between 2004 and 2007 Russia sold $37.9 billion worth of military equipment - outstripping even the U.S. in that period - to more than 80 developing nations on every populated continent. Russian arms manufacturers have cut deals for everything from helicopters to tanks and rifles. Among eager customers have been North Korea, Iran, China and Venezuela, which are barred from buying Western weaponry under various sanction regulations. The embargoes have had the effect of recruiting new clients for Moscow. "Venezuela's jets used...
...strategy is twofold. It wants to use the huge profits it makes selling arms around the world as a platform on which to relaunch its own defense forces. But the arms sales are not only about money. Moscow hopes that as Venezuela and other countries grow more dependent on Russian weapons, political and economic ties will also grow, increasing Russia's global heft. "The West sees it as saber-rattling, but for Russia it is about retaking what it sees as its rightful position in the world," says Guy Anderson, editor of Jane's World Defence Industry in London...
...resources and mountains of military hardware - to cut a series of clever deals. In 2006, for example, then President Vladimir Putin flew a delegation of oil, gas and defense executives to Algeria. Putin negotiated to sell $7.5 billion worth of combat jets, missiles and tanks to the government, while Russian energy giants Gazprom and Lukoil secured key oil and gas concessions in the North African nation. And Putin offered an extra sweetener: he wrote off Algeria's near $5 billion Soviet-era debt. Then there was the deal Putin cut with Libya just before he stepped down from the presidency...
...weaponry the country's factories produce, while old customers such as India and China have begun producing their own weapons in the past decade or so. Unless Russia modernizes its factories, Moscow could lose more clients, says the Stratfor analysis. If that happens, the report states, "the Russian defense industry will be hard-pressed to keep from becoming irrelevant...
That's why Russian officials from the President on down have made it clear in the past few months that more money - and hence a modernization of defense-industry facilities - is on its way. And why much of the money is heading to companies that produce prized exports such as the Sukhoi fighter jets. But finding enough talent to overhaul Russia's rusting production lines may prove tough. Defense companies did not recruit and train engineers during the recessionary 1990s, leaving the average age of a worker in the industry at about 60, according to Kozyulin...