Zimbabwe plans to continue its defense and security cooperation with Russia, but it needs to build up funds to buy "state-of-the-art" Russian weapons, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa told Sputnik on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2019) Zimbabwe plans to continue its defense and security cooperation with Russia, but it needs to build up funds to buy "state-of-the-art" Russian weapons, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"We have always had cooperation in the field of defense and security with Russia. This we are not abandoning ... Yes, at the moment we don't have much economic muscle to buy the things which we would want to buy from the Russian Federation, but down the line, as Zimbabwe becomes stronger in terms of its economic muscle, we should be able to buy the type of hardware, which we know the Russian Federation has and is the state-of-the-art type of equipment that they have, but we are not in a hurry," Mnangagwa said.
The president added that the country would like to focus on "manpower" first.
"We would want initially, we don't think we [should] concentrate on hardware. We should concentrate on manpower training in the area of the army," Mnangagwa said.
The Zimbabwean president is currently on his first official visit to Moscow and will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later in the day.
