MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti) - The first Mistral-class helicopter carrier with the second Russian crew on board has completed sea trials Friday and returned to the port of Saint-Nazaire, Agence France-Presse reported.
At the end of June, 400 Russian sailors - two crews - arrived in the French city of Saint-Nazaire to take part in the drills. On September 13 the Vladivostok war ship with the Russian crew first went to the sea. There were about 200 Russians and about 200 French sailors on board. After nearly 10 days of sailing the ship safely completed all of the tasks and returned to the port.
The 1.2-billion-euro ($1.7 billion at the current exchange rate) contract to supply the Mistral-class ships between the French ship-building company DCNS and Russia's state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport was signed in June 2011. The first carrier, the Vladivostok, is to be operated by the Russian Navy in 2014, while the second ship, the Sevastopol, will arrive in 2015.
France has repeatedly threatened to suspend the supply of the war ships, being under pressure from the United States, bitterly opposed to the implementation of the contract. However, according to experts, even in case of non-implementation of the contract there won't be any serious negative consequences for Russia as France will have to pay a large penalty and Russia is able to build its own analog of the Mistral.
