French ship Russia wants to buy in St Petersburg

A French navy ship of the type that Russia hopes to buy arrived Monday for a visit to St. Petersburg, fueling concern in Georgia and other ex-Soviet nations that it may be used to intimidate its neighbors, AP reported.

The Mistral amphibious assault ship, which is capable of carrying more than a dozen helicopters along with dozens of tanks and other armored vehicles, is fit for missions intended to project Russian power.

It docked Monday on the Neva River, about 1 kilometer (just over half-a-mile) from the Hermitage museum. Russian officials are considering buying a Mistral ship and a license to build several others. It would mark the first such purchase from a NATO country.

Media reports have said that it would cost Russia up to euro500 million ($750 million) to buy a Mistral class ship.

The Kremlin increasingly has sought in recent years to reaffirm Russia's global reach and prestige in world affairs. It has sent its warships to patrol pirate-infested waters off Somalia and dispatched a navy squadron to the Caribbean where it took part in joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy and made several port calls in the fall of 2008.

The Caribbean mission, aimed at flexing muscles near the U.S. in the tense months after the brief war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008, was the most visible Russian navy deployment since Soviet times.

But despite the Kremlin's ambitions, the post-Soviet economic meltdown has left the Russian navy with only a handful of big surface ships in seaworthy condition and badly crippled the nation's shipbuilding industries.

Russia has only one Soviet-built aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, which is much smaller than the U.S. aircraft carriers and has been plagued by mechanical problems and accidents.

Russian shipbuilders have opposed the deal, saying the government should invest in domestic production instead. Navy officials have argued that license production of Mistral-class ships would help modernize the aging industries.

The navy chief, Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky, has said that a ship like Mistral would have allowed the Russian navy to mount a much more efficient operation in the Black Sea during the Russia-Georgia war. He said the French ship would take just 40 minutes to do the job that the Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels did in 26 hours, apparently referring to amphibious landing operations.