Russia Looks to Buy French Amphibious Assault Ship

The Russians are looking at buying a Mistral Class amphibious assault ship.

It's roughly equivalent to the Tarawa class of LHA, it's a through-deck helicopter carrier with a well deck, and the possibility of carrying some STOVL aircraft, and can carry, and act as a command center for, amphibious assaults.

This is a capability that was never really the focus of the Russian navy, nor of the Soviet navy before it, which would explain why they want to purchase this capability from a 3^rd country.

I'm not entirely sure why they feel that they need this capability though. The only 2 applications that I see are in multinational peace-keeping operations, and for invading Georgia, though issues with both the Turks and the Ukrainians would make the latter application difficult.