Investigation: Russian 'Kalashnikov' sells weapons to the US in circumvention of sanctions

Weapons of the Russian state concern Kalashnikov, which has been under sanctions for seven years, are freely sold on the American market under a different brand, reports Economic Truth.

Photo: Shutterstock

Since the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014, world leaders have imposed sanctions on certain Russian citizens, military-industrial companies and related businesses.

Sanctions from the United States, the European Union, Canada and a number of other countries have not spared the well-known Russian concern Kalashnikov, part of the Rostec state corporation.

The concern's assets abroad were blocked, and individuals and legal entities of these countries were forbidden to cooperate with it. In 2018, the concern even complained that, due to sanctions, it had lost up to 90% of the global civilian weapons market.

However, as it turned out, weapons manufactured by the Kalashnikov concern are still sold in the United States. Despite the sanctions.

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More than a year ago, the AV-46 air pistol appeared on the websites of American gun stores. Weapons connoisseurs immediately recognized it as the Russian IZH-46, sold under the Baikal brand.

Such pistols are produced only by the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant (IMZ) in Udmurtia, which is part of the sanctioned Kalashnikov concern. It also produces guided artillery shells, drones and other weapons that Russia is using in its war against Ukraine.

How did the sanctioned Kalashnikov weapons get onto the American market?

The pistols are the same, the manufacturers are “different”

American arms dealers do not hide: they sell IZH-46M pistols manufactured in the Russian Federation. At the same time, according to them, these weapons are not manufactured by IMZ, and therefore they can supposedly be legally imported and sold in the United States.

“Air Venturi has negotiated the production and purchase of the iconic AV 46-M air pistol from Alfa Precision, a non-military Russian weapons manufacturer,” the online store states.

As American users write on the profile forum, the AV 46-M pistol comes in a cardboard box without written instructions and spare parts.

The AV 46-M differs from the original IZH-46M in the color of the handle and the inscription on the barrel. Previously, the manufacturer “Izh” was indicated there, but now there is the inscription “Made in Russia by Alfa Precision”. There are no other differences between the pistols.

Mysterious one-employee company

There is little information in open sources about Alfa Precision, which allegedly manufactures the AV 46-M.

The firm has websites in Russian and French, as well as several Facebook pages. Only one of them shows the French registration. The remaining three are registered in Russia.

On the French version of the website, Alfa Precision actively sells a wide range of Baikal brand products, not limited to sports and air guns. In particular, small rifles, machine guns and carbines IMZD.

In France, she sells Izhevsk Baikal rifles.

Weapon connoisseurs will find on the French website of the company the same IZH-46, which, however, is not currently on sale.
The company also trades with South Africa, Germany, the Czech Republic and Serbia, according to import and export tracking websites.

The Alfa Precision company (Alfa Precision LLC) was registered in Izhevsk in 2016 at the address st. Tsvetochnaya, 6. This is a multi-storey residential building located a few blocks from the IMZ. The number of its employees is one person.
There is not a word about the production of pistols on the Russian Alfa Precision website. It notes that the company produces and sells only stem blanks.

In the commercials published by the company on social networks, a large workshop, expensive machines and large-scale production can be seen in the background. That is, the manufacture of stem blanks is definitely not located in a residential high-rise building.

Customers of the Alfa Precision online store are invited to place an order through an individual entrepreneur Sokolov Alexei Valerievich. Little is known about him: originally from Stary Martyanov, Udmurtia, living in Izhevsk, in 2015 he served in the army.

On his LinkedIn page, he indicated that he worked as a sales manager for Alfa Precision. Even less is known about the head of the firm. According to official data, he is a certain Mikhail Kozlov.

In addition to the Izhevsk-based Alpha Precision, since 2017 he has owned the Alpha Precision company (the letter “e” has been added) in the city of Vyatskie Polyany, Kirov Region. Registration address – st. Lenina, 333A, room 2.

Quite by chance, in the same city and on the same street there are workshops of the Molot plant, which produces 26 types of rifled weapons and Metis anti-tank systems.

In 2015, Russian state television reported that the company was removed from the Kalashnikov concern. Probably to avoid sanctions, but this did not help. In 2017, the plant was included in the US sanctions list as an enterprise associated with the Kalashnikov concern.

Cover for Kalashnikov

Kalashnikov and Alfa Precision do not advertise their connections. The concern also did not announce the sale of rights to produce IZH-46 pistols. On the IMZ website there is information that weapons are produced in Izhevsk. This is confirmed by the Rostec website.

It is noteworthy that Kalashnikov sued the copyright for the AK-47 from the relatives of the inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov. Therefore, it is unlikely that the defense company allowed someone to sell their pistols without permission.

It is quite possible that a company with one employee from Izhevsk is not an accident, but a way to circumvent sanctions.

The activities of Alfa Precision may be of interest to OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) - a division of the US Department of the Treasury that regulates the sanctions of the American state.

In addition, EU countries should impose sanctions against Alfa Precision to prevent such cases in the future. Russia, which exports terrorism to neighboring countries, should not export weapons. This is not the first time that the Kalashnikov Concern and the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant have found themselves at the epicenter of a scandal surrounding sanctions.

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Kalashnikov used the Lipetsk Mechanical Plant, which was not subject to Western sanctions in 2014, to order equipment from foreign manufacturers.

Also, the Russian sub-sanctioned concern used LMZ to purchase metal processing tools for IMZ. As the correspondence between the managers of the companies says, the Lipetsk plant sent out requests to manufacturers from the EU, the USA, Japan and South Korea.

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