Russia Has No Plans to Deliver S-400 Missile Systems to China Before 2018

China will get Russian S-400s no earlier than in 2018, the Rostec head said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russia will not supply advanced S-400 Triumf air defense systems to China before 2018, head of Russia’s state technologies corporation Rostec Sergey Chemezov said.

"We have a rule: first we supply our own army with weaponry and then we sell weaponry abroad. A lot of customers ask for earlier deliveries for their orders, but we warn them of the time frames and delivery order right away," Chemezov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant newspaper.

In April, a military source told RIA Novosti that Russia could start delivering S-400 air defense systems to China by the end of 2016.

Vladimir Kozhin, a Russian presidential aide on military-technical cooperation announced in November of last year that Moscow and Beijing were in talks on the deliveries of Russian-made advanced S-400 Triumf air defense systems.

The S-400 is Russia's next-generation air defense system, carrying three different types of missiles capable of destroying aerial targets at short-to-extremely long range. It is capable of tracking and destroying all existing aerial targets, including ballistics and cruise missiles.