Plan for Russian Military Equipment Import Substitutions for 2014 Complete

The plan for substituting imported productions of arms and military equipment is 100 percent complete, a senior Russian Defense Ministry's official told Russian President Putin.

MOSCOW, December 19 (Sputnik) – The plan for replacing foreign-made arms and equipment used by the Russian military is fully complete, a senior Russian Defense Ministry official told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

“The issues of substituting imported productions of arms and military equipment are under special control…On the whole, the plan for 2014 is 100 percent complete,” Col. Oleg Iskusnov, who heads the ministry’s command-and-control center for the daily functioning of the troops, told Putin.

Following Crimea’s reunification with Russia, the West introduced several rounds of sanctions against Moscow, aimed at weakening Russia’s economy and specifically its defense industry. Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, in his turn, also banned cooperation of Ukraine's military-industrial resources with Russia. The restrictions, however, have encouraged Moscow to focus on eliminating any dependency on military imports.

In July, Vladimir Putin stated that Russia’s defense industry was absolutely self-sufficient and would benefit from the sanctions, as the country would have no options but to launch its own production “where it did not exist before.”

In September, Vladimir Kozhin, presidential aide on military-technical cooperation, said that Russia would eventually be able to sustain almost 100 percent of military production domestically.

According to the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, Russia will continue implementing its plans for the replacement of imported military resources even when the Western sanctions against Moscow are lifted.