MOSCOW, July 20. /TASS/. Russia will supply a large batch of tanks to Iraq this year, Russian president’s aide for military technical cooperation Vladimir Kozhin said in an interview with the Izvestia daily on Thursday.

According to earlier reports, Russia’s Uralvagonzavod corporation plans to supply seventy-three T-90S/SK tanks to Iraq in 2017.

"It is a big contract for a big batch. I cannot name the exact sum, the number [of tanks] is big," Kozhin said.

According to Izvestia, this batch will be followed by others. "In this case, we can speak about supplies of several hundreds of tanks and the sum of the contract may exceed one billion U.S. dollars. This order is a big help to Uralvagonzavod. Apart from that, this contract is a serious foreign policy success for Russia - despite the fact the combat operation in Iraq were conducted by the Americans, the Iraqi military in the long run have opted for the Russian tank," Izvestia quoted Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, as saying.

The T-90S is an export modification of the T-90 tank. Equipped with powerful weapons, it is an all-weather round-the-clock tank with a state-of-the-art fire control system, reliable armor and can boast high maneuverability. The T-90SK is a command modification.