Russia provides 10 MiG fighter jets to Lebanon for free

Thanks to the anonymous poster for this news tip.

Russia provides 10 MiG fighter jets to Lebanon for free:

Tony Halpin in Moscow

Russia gave Lebanon ten MiG fighter jets yesterday in a deal to boost defence cooperation.

The MiG29 Fulcrum fighters would be provided free to Lebanon under an agreement on military-technical assistance, the head of Russia’s defence cooperation service said. Mikhail Dmitryev said that the jets would come from Russia’s existing stock.

He said that Moscow was also in talks to supply Beirut with heavy armour, adding that supplies of such weaponry were “now possible after the situation in this nation has stabilised”.

He said: “We view the Lebanese army as the main guarantor of this nation’s stability, therefore the armed forces of this country must be strengthened.” The deal followed a meeting in Moscow between Anatoly Serdyukov, the Defence Minister, and Elias Murrhis, his Lebanese counterpart. Mr Serdyukov said that Russia had received a detailed list of armaments sought by Lebanon.

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Also....

Missing the Target

By P. David Hornik

FrontPageMagazine.com Friday, December 19, 2008

It was just a few days ago that Russia succeeded, along with its fellow Quartet member the United States, in getting the UN Security Council to pass a resolution on Middle East peace.

Yet by Thursday tensions had surfaced between Israel and Russia over a purportedly imminent Russian sale of an antiaircraft missile system to Iran. The system, the S-300, is one of the most advanced of its kind in the world and would seriously hinder an attempt to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Russia has already sold TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles to the regime of the mullahs.

A report by Russia’s own RIA news agency claims Russia is now “fulfilling a contract” to deliver S-300 systems to Iran. One site, by no means to be dismissed, says Russia is already physically transferring the systems and it’s a done deal. Jerusalem, though, is interpreting the RIA report as pressure aimed at getting Israel to sell Russia 100 of Israel’s advanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

Read it HERE.