U.S. may impose sanctions against those buying Russian weapons

PanARMENIAN.Net - The U.S. State Department announced that starting from Tuesday, January 30, Washington would be able to impose sanctions against foreign companies or people for "significant transactions with persons in the defense and intelligence sectors of the Russian government," TASS reports.

According to Kommersant, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury provided Congress with a "secret report" on the sanctions, but they are not going to make the information public.

Starting from January 29, the State Department may begin imposing sanctions in accordance with section 231 of the America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for significant transactions by organizations from the Russian defense or intelligence sectors. According to the explanations by State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert, it became clear that no one specifically would be penalized yet, the newspaper wrote. The State Department believes that the fear of coming under American sanctions will make foreigners refrain from cooperating with Russia on its own.

According to a top manager in one of Russia’s defense industry enterprises, the sanctions "almost guarantee" problems with the means of delivering products to customers - for example, a ship for transporting weapons chartered from a third party can only operate under a Russian flag (since it transports the product with the label "top secret" ).

Armenia and Azerbaijan have signed military cooperation contracts with Russia.

Azerbaijan has already bought Russian weapons, ammunition and military equipment for some $5 billion, while shipments are still underway. The two countries are currently working on a new contract.

Armenia, in turn, is constantly building up its armed forces with Russian weapons and equipment. Yerevan and Moscow signed a $200 million loan deal for purchasing armaments and have already agreed on a new $100 million loan deal.