''Pentagon is OK with Buying Helos from Putin’s Favorite Arms Dealer''

From Wired

''A top Pentagon official is trying to stop congressional opposition to a deal that provides Russian helicopters to the Afghan military — even as the same official Russian arms exporter also supplies Syrian dictator Bashar Assad with weapons used to massacre dissidents.

James Miller, the Pentagon’s new policy chief, wrote a letter to legislators defending the lucrative deal with Rosoboronexport, a firm that until 2010 was barred from doing business with the government because of its tendency to sell arms to rogue states Syria and Iran. “The [helicopter] acquisition effort is critical to building the capacity of Afghanistan security forces and supports the president’s continuing efforts to build improved relations with Russia,” Miller wrote on March 30, reports Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio.''

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