Russian Daily Kommersant reported that Russia is having difficulty delivering 11 Su-35s to Indonesia due to the U.S. Law on Countering the Opponents of the United States through Sanctions (Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act /CAATSA).
Earlier, it was reported that Indonesia will take delivery of the first aircraft this month. However, this is not possible now because of potential sanctions.
Financial aspects of the deal areal so under threat as the U.S. could sanction one of the commercial bank that is providing loan to Indonesia to finance the deal
In Jakarta, the first of 11 cars was expected to arrive in October, but the US did not give Indonesia guarantees not to apply restrictive measures. The Russian side also has difficulties: when implementing the contract, it was planned to use a credit scheme, funds for which would be allocated by one of the commercial banks. But this is fraught with grave consequences for him, since in the United States they regard this loan as cooperation with Rosoboronexport and impose sanctions against the bank.
Indonesia signed a contract for the Su-35 squadron in February, becoming the second foreign customer of this type of fighter (the first export agreement for 24 vehicles worth over $ 2 billion was signed in November 2015 with China). Negotiations with Jakarta with varying degrees of intensity lasted for three years: in 2015, the Indonesian military directly stated that they had direct instructions from President Joko Widodo to purchase the Su-35 to replace outdated F-5 Tiger fighter jets that had been in service for more than 40 years and had completely exhausted the actual your resource.
According to a Kommersant source in the MTC field, despite the fact that the decision to purchase the Su-35 was made long before CAATSA, the US authorities have not yet formulated a clear position on Indonesia. A number of media outlets reported that Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is trying to convince Congress to soften sanctions against some countries “who have historically developed relations with Russia, but now they are against the United States with the prospect of buying American defence systems.” In this case, it was about Indonesia, India and Vietnam. But none of these countries received any firm guarantees from the United States, the Kommersant source is convinced in the sphere of military-technical cooperation.
Washington had not given its guarantees to Jakarta that Indonesia would not face sanctions under the CAATSA, which targets, among other things, Russia’s international transactions, the Kommersant newspaper reported, citing two Russian defence industry top managers and a source close to the presidential administration.
