MOSCOW, December 2 (RAPSI) – A contract to deliver up to 200,000 Kalashnikov brand weapons to North America has been suspended on the initiative of the North American party. “We have not delivered a single gun under this contract,” Kalashnikov Director General Alexei Krivoruchko told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

In January, the Kalashnikov Group signed an exclusive five-year contract with the Russian Weapon Company (RWC) to supply between 80,000 and 200,000 guns to the US and Canada annually.

Russian Weapon Company (RWC) is the exclusive US importer of Russian Izhmash and Baikal hunting carbines, sporting rifles and shotguns to the United States and Canada. Under the contract, Kalashnikov was also to provide post-sale and maintenance services.

However, in July 2014 Washington introduced sanctions against several Russian defense and commodity enterprises, including Kalashnikov, which is why the contract is now on hold.

The Kalashnikov Group is an association of the largest companies in the Russian small arms industry. It was established in 2013 and includes Izhmash, the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant, the Vyatskie Polyany Machine Building Plant Molot, the Koshkin Automatic Lines Design Bureau (Klimovsk) and NITI Progress (Izhevsk).

The group exports its products to 27 countries including the US, the UK, Germany, Norway, Italy, Canada, Kazakhstan and Thailand.