Mistral ships won’t be delivered to Russia Nov. 14. Who will pay the bill?

Mistral ships won’t be delivered to Russia Nov. 14 – Who will pay the bill? (RT).

France hasn’t yet fixed a date for delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia (scheduled for November 14), the French defense minister said. If France doesn’t deliver due to US and NATO pressure, it will have to pay a huge forfeit.

"No delivery date can be fixed at this stage," Jean-Yves Le Drian, the country’s defense minister told the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s Parliament.

"The president of the Republic has said that a definitive decision will come at the right moment, taking into account all the responsibilities that come with this decision, which is not a simple one," he added.

On Thursday, reports emerged that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin will not attend the ceremony where France hands over the first Mistral ship to Russia at the Saint-Nazaire shipyards. On October 29, he said that Moscow had received an invitation to take delivery.

DCNS, a French industrial group specializing in naval defense and energy, sent the invitations to the ceremony of the ship delivery scheduled November 14, France’s Le Nouvel Observateur magazine wrote on Wednesday. However, the event was canceled.

The outlet managed to take a screenshot of the letter which was sent to a French official.

“When I opened my mail, I fell off my chair," the official told the magazine on condition of anonymity.

The chief of DCNS would not confirm whether this letter, signed by the export manager, was authentic. The official line is that these invitations were issued by mistake and the project manager was subsequently fired.

At the beginning of November, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg received a letter from eight US lawmakers, urging the Alliance to purchase the Mistral vessels.

“Sensitive to the financial burden that France may incur should it rightly refuse to transfer these warships to Russia, we renew our call that NATO purchase or lease the warships as a common naval asset,” the letter said.

However, a military source in Brussels told the TASS news agency that "NATO’s budget is too small to not only purchase Russia-ordered Mistral helicopter carriers, but to even compensate France half of the penalties in accordance with the contract.”

NATO’s military and civilian budget for 2014 is $ 1.6 billion, while the penalty for non-delivery of the two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia could reach $ 3 billion, the source explained. Hmmmm.....Wasn't Turkey's dictator President Erdogan dreaming of an aircraft carrier? Would come in handy to harass anyone in the Mediterranean sea.