You're reading: Rosoboronexport denies preparations to sue Mistral builder

Rosoboronexport bluntly denied media allegations that company lawyers had been ordered to draw up claims against French company DCNS, the builder of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers.

 “This information is totally erroneous,” company press secretary Vyacheslav Davidenko told Interfax-AVN on Thursday.

Rosoboronexport deputy head Igor Sevastyanov told reporters on Sept. 30 that the document on the French transfer of the first Mistral-class helicopter carrier Vladivostok to Russia would be signed in Saint-Nazaire in late October or in early November.

The Vladivostok manned by a second Russian crew is on a training mission off the port Lorient in the Bay of Biscay. The ship departed from Saint-Nazaire on Sept. 24.

“The second crew which will man the Sevastopol Mistral-class helicopter carrier has practiced special-purpose maneuvering,” a source in the Russian Navy Staff told Interfax-AVN.

He noted that over 200 sailors and approximately the same number of instructors and specialists from the French shipyards were staying aboard the ship. “The voyage will last for ten days,” he said.

The first Russian crew to man the Vladivostok was trained earlier.

The French Embassy in Moscow did not confirm the reports that the Mistral ships would be transferred to Russia in Saint-Nazaire on Nov. 4.

“We cannot confirm this information,” a source in the embassy told Interfax, commenting on Tuesday’s media reports about the of the helicopter carrier to Russia on Nov. 4.

Paris is maintaining the position outlined by President Francois Hollande at a press conference on Sept. 18, the source said.

The French leader said at the time that the first Mistral-class carrier could only be handed over by France to Russia if the ceasefire in east Ukraine holds.

“But this is not the case yet,” he told the press conference in Paris.

It was reported that Russian state arms trader Rosoboronexport and France’s DCNS signed a contract to build two Mistral-class helicopter carriers in June 2011. The Vladivostok carrier was scheduled to be shipped this fall.

St. Petersburg-based Baltiysky Zavod, part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, built the sterns. The STX France Saint Nazaire shipyard attached the sterns to the bows and put the finishing touches to the ships.

However, French President Francois Hollande said this September that a final decision regarding the delivery of Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia would be made in late October and would depend on the events evolving in Ukraine. He emphasized that the decision would be determined by the presence of a ceasefire and a political agreement between the parties involved in the Ukrainian conflict.

Nevertheless, the ongoing sanctions on Russia allow for the execution of previous military-technological contracts. A number of NATO countries, primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland, have repeatedly tried to persuade France not to deliver the Mistral-class ships to Russia.