Some Russian defense news from April 17-18, 2012 . . .
Militaryparitet.com provided a link to an interesting Livejournal site. The latter’s apparently been scouring government tender offers, and located one worth 600 million rubles for work to upgrade Votkinsk for Yars ICBM production.
According to RIA Novosti, a Rosoboroneksport official says talks with China about selling the Su-35 are frozen because the PRC wants to buy only a limited number of the new fighters.
Interesting that France, Italy, etc. don’t use the same logic when Moscow talks about purchasing samples.
Vzglyad.ru covered the release of SIPRI’s global military expenditure report for 2011. The U.S. spent 41 percent of the world’s total, China 8, Russia 4.
Deputy Defense Minister Nikolay Pankov talked to the Federation Council about military housing. He told Senators 60,000 permanent and service apartments were ready to be occupied at the beginning of this year. See TV Zvezda coverage.
At least for the camera, Pankov didn’t offer an explanation why such a large number were waiting to be occupied.
22nd Army Commander, General-Major Sergey Yudin’s traded his command for a staff job. He’s now the Chief, OMU for the Western MD. See Mil.ru.
Russian Defense Policy 
Sorry, Yudin’s should have been the 20th Army. 22nd was the Nizhniy army’s old number.