Italy is ready to buy from Russia a rather large number of the modern passenger airplanes, said chairman of the Russian government Vladimir Putin referring to the Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100) one hundred seater twinjet.

The head of the Russian government addressed the SSJ100 during his visit to Khabarovsk, one of the largest cities in the Russia’s Far East. The airplane’s assembly line is set at the plant in Komsomolsk-upon-Amur in the Khabarovsk Region. “This is our first civil airplane which is made on computer screen, and meets latest international requirements to civil airplanes. Our Italian partners are ready to buy a relatively large quantity of these airplanes”, Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying.

On December 3 Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev, together with Vladimir Putin and Italian prime-minister Silvio Berluskoni inspected a Superjet 100 exhibited at Sochi airport. According to Vladimir Putin, promotion of this aircraft type to the world markets and Europe in particular is “an important task”.

“We have carefully selected this market niche, which allows us not to compete with the European manufacturers, but much rather promote out products to the European market [without competing with local makers], which is important”, Putin stressed.