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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Azerbaijan Arming Itself Against Iran |
| 2007-04-02 |
| Azerbaijan has purchased MiG-29 fighters from Ukraine. No mention yet of how many, or at what price. Second hand MiG-29s have been fetching as much as $35 million each. Ukraine is the second largest user of MiG-29s, with about 210 of them. Russia has 600 of the 1,600 produced. No longer in mass production, the Russian production facilities are kept busy mostly with modifications and building variants that might attract future orders. Sales of the MiG-29, by Ukraine, require the permission of Russia, as all the spare parts come from there. Russia probably approved this sale to annoy Iran, which has a large Azeri minority (about a quarter of the population.) Azerbaijan has oil, and has more than doubled (to a billion dollars a year) its defense budget in the past three years. Far more importantly, the Azeri are waking up to the fact that Iran is as belligerent towards them as it is to the other gulf states. It even threatened to drop missiles on its capital, for being friendly to the US. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #2 Or against Armenia to take back Nagorno-Karabakh. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-04-02 21:58 |
| #1 good |
| Posted by: sinse 2007-04-02 21:43 |