Brussels, 25/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 25 November, France announced that it wanted to postpone delivery of the first Mistral helicopter carrier to Russia “until further notice”. In a press release, France's President François Hollande said “it was appropriate to delay, until further notice, examination of the request for authorisation needed to export the first landing helicopter dock (LHD) to the Russian Federation” because “the current situation in Eastern Ukraine still does not permit delivery” of the ship.
Earlier in the day, France's Minister for Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius had warned that “the conditions for delivery had not been met for obvious reasons”.
Russia's Deputy Minister for Defence Yuri Borisov announced that Russia would not take France to court “for the moment”. “We will wait patiently” for the delivery, he said, quoted by Russian news agency Ria Novosti. Borisov said that the contract they had signed included precise arrangements on the ship's delivery time. “We will respect the contract to the letter, as civilised people do”, he added. (CG)