MOSCOW - Breaking its earlier tradition of keeping China at bay when came to sales of advanced weapons, Russia is prepared to discuss selling its most modern Su-35 4++ generation fighters to China, said the deputy director of the Russian government arms export agency, Rosoboronexport.
"We are ready to work with the Chinese partners in this direction," Alexander Mikheyev told reporters after the opening ceremony of China's Zhuhai Airshow 2010, according to the Russian official RIA-Novosti news agency.
The newest Sukhoi Su-35 multirole fighters should roll off assembly lines this year. Deliveries of the first 48 aircraft are expected to the Russian Air Force between 2010 and 2015.
Since 2008, Russia has offered an export variant of the fighter to India, Malaysia, Algeria, Brazil and Venezuela, but no contracts had been signed so far.
Mikheyev said that Russia and China are in the initial stage of negotiations and will be discussing the features of the export variant of the Su-35 and how to integrate it with previously supplied Su-30 fighters and the locally assembled (under Russian license) Su-27s.
A source in Rosoboronexport said that this contract would mark a departure from recent stagnation in Russian arms sales to China. During this time, China pushed to buy Russia's most advanced weapons, but only a few samples, and Russia feared China would copy the technologies.
Dmitry Vasilyev, an arms export analyst with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a think tank here, said that Moscow's decision to offer Su-35s to China is prompted by advances in developing PAK-FA (T-50), a fifth-generation fighter on which Russia's Sukhoi works jointly with India.
He said that a price tag for Su-35 would not be lower than $50 million apiece.