How to Stop Doing Business with Russia’s Arm Exporter

As part of the United States plan to begin military withdrawals from Afghanistan in 2014, the Department of Defense (DOD) contracted with the Russian stateowned arms dealer, Rosoboronexport, to provide helicopters to the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF). DOD has continued and expanded its purchases from Rosoboronexport even while acknowledging that the Russian arms dealer has enabled mass atrocities by supplying Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with weapons that have been used to murder Syrian civilians.

Despite Department of Defense objections, there are a range of broader U.S. political, moral, financial and security interests that demand alternatives to doing business with a Russian arms exporter that is complicit in the murder of Syrian civilians. As such, Human Rights First issued a framework for how the Pentagon can stop doing business with Russia’s arms exporter.