Russia is looking to buy and later co-build Mistral class assault ships. These ships are designed to operate a dozen helicopters (including heavy lift ones), carry 70 vehicles, hundreds of troops, and multiple landing craft including large hovercraft. It is roughly comparable to the American San Antonio class assault ship, but at a quarter of the cost mostly because it has less defensive weaponry and is built to commercial-ship standards (which is becoming more common - Japan's navy ships are built like this, for example). http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090826/wl_nm/us_russia_france_carrier This is actually one of a number of French weapon systems that Russia is looking at. Recent Russian weapon systems have a poor history in actual combat, and the Russian government is finally getting fed up. But there are lots of questions about this particular ship, which does not, on the surface, seem to meet Russia's naval needs and is rather expensive for a nation that can't even maintain the ships they have.
Very interesting, kinda surprised it has taken Russia this long to accept that what they make isn't that good.
Well, the french do have a very good naval industry so Im not suprised the Russians would go to them.
France took one over to Russia to show it off, and are even going to let them try it out in wargames. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_france_navy_ship
Russia is also going to be buying Israeli unmanned drones. Medelev is going to revamp the Russian Military.
The sale has totally fallen through because of continued Russian involvement (to put it mildly) in Ukraine. France has returned Russia's money and taken full possession of the two ships and "the matter is closed". France is putting them on the market. Looks like the most likely buyer will be Egypt (with Saudi Arabian money), but China and other nations have shown interest. This kind of ship is extremely useful in natural disasters as well as deploying soldiers. Egypt already owns a couple French military ships, although nothing of this size. Supposedly most of the equipment on board is French - I think the Russian specific communication equipment (already installed) is side-to-side with the French stuff instead of replacing them. The limited self-defense systems were to be Russian, but they were going to be installed in Russia so it will probably have French systems when sold.
Oh, and Russia already built some of the attack helicopters (Ka-52K's) that were going to go on the ships and have promised to continue with the full order (30ish). I don't know what they are going to do with them.