Arms Odds and Ends (June 3, 2016)

Canada

Sometimes Canada gets good press, and sometimes bad.  The decision of the liberal government to continue a sale of armored vehicles to Saudia Arabia is turning into quite a political scandal. (LINK) Arms sales are fascinating precisely because of the highly political nature of these sales and the very real economic and security issues (domestically) that play into arms export decisions.

Nigeria

Nigeria has lost over $15 billion dollars due to arms acquisition corruption (LINK).  I wrote about Russia's own fraud problem a few years ago with some nice graphs.  Check it out (LINK)!

Russia

A good analysis of the effect of the economic crisis on Russia's military modernization process (LINK).

Another article examines problems within the Russian arms industry.  Some of this stems from corruption, some from incompetence.  (LINK)

On an unrelated (but not completely) note: more evidence that Russia is very concerned about the perceived legitimacy of its annexation of Crimea domestically (LINK). The political effects of the sanctions would be much worse if there wasn't a rally effect based on a widely-shared belief that Russia's actions were righteous and justified.

AFP: Medvedev scraps Ukraine visit after gas merger fails

AFP: Medvedev scraps Ukraine visit after gas merger fails

This particular piece of news contains some interesting tidbits:

A Russian defense ministry source told AFP on Friday that Medvedev had cancelled plans to go to Sevastopol to preside over a Navy Day parade amid an unexpected surge in tensions, saying the status of the parade was unexpectedly downgraded.

I am not sure how a head of state can preside over a military parade in a sovereign neighbor's territory.

It is also interesting how high a level the talks are between Gazprom and Naftogaz since Medvedev was the president of Gazprom before he was Prime Minister.

Ukraine has also repeatedly insisted that any joint business with Gazprom should be implemented on equal terms and ruled out an outright merger.

It seems as if Ukraine - even under a relatively pro-Russian president has problems being strong-armed. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the region.