Algeria buys Russian arms but keeps Moscow at arm's length
Despite a long-standing relationship whereby Algeria buys Russian weaponry, the two nations seem to have trouble seeing eye to eye.
Notwithstanding its extensive arms trade with Algeria, Russia’s political relations with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his government seem curiously constrained.
On one hand, Algeria is a top market for Russian weapons. For example, Russian media have only recently reported a massive 2014 deal under which Algeria will assemble 200 T-90 tanks using kits supplied by Russia’s state arms supplier Rosoboronexport — a contract one Russian military expert estimated at $1 billion and described as “possibly the largest export contract for main battle tanks in the world.”
According to the report in the business-oriented newspaper Vedomosti, the contract follows a 2010 sale of 185 T-90 tanks as well as a 2013 agreement to buy equipment to modernize 300 Soviet-supplied T-72 tanks. At the same time, Russia is reportedly building two Kilo-class submarines for Algeria. In 2006, Rosoboronexport announced a $7.5 billion sale of jet fighters, training aircraft, missile systems and tanks after a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bouteflika that also yielded an agreement to write off $4.74 billion in Soviet-era debt held by Russia.
On the other hand, the Kremlin website does not report a Putin-Bouteflika meeting since the 2006 session, although then-President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Algeria to meet his counterpart in 2010. Prior to Putin’s 2006 meeting, which was said to be a five-hour Kremlin conversation, the two men had not met since 2001. While every relationship is different, a close cooperative relationship typically produces more than three presidential-level bilateral meetings in 15 years.
