Speculation: Did the West offer Russia economic incentives in return for Ukraine peace deal?

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/hariri-forestalls-arming-lebanese-military


It's interesting to see how such major deals for arms shipment were previously stalled but now going through right after the peace deal agreement for Ukraine. Could this be one of the agreements between the West and Russia?


From Source:

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri did not make good on his promises to make the appropriations necessary to finalize the arms deal signed by the Lebanese army and the Russian government. The United States and Saudi Arabia support Hariri’s delay, while the army is in the midst of an ongoing confrontation with takfiri terrorist groups on the eastern border with Syria.

The Lebanese army should not be supplied with Russian weapons, though it desperately needs them for its battle against takfiri terrorist groups. This is a logical deduction from the arms deal’s hiatus, brought about by a failure to make the proposed $500 million appropriations. These appropriations were supposed to come out of a $1 billion grant from Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese army and security forces, the spending of which is being supervised by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

During a visit to Moscow last January, a large delegation of the Lebanese army leadership headed by the chief of staff, Brigadier General Walid Salman, put the finishing touches on an order of Russian weapons. They carefully determined the types of weapons they needed and signed the contracts. The weapons are ready to be transferred to Lebanon as soon as Hariri makes the appropriations, something he promised to do “within 48 hours.”

This raises questions about the reason behind Hariri’s position. Do the Saudis not want this number of weapons reaching the Lebanese army in its confrontation with terrorist groups in the hills along the eastern border, so as to keep the area a bleeding wound for Hezbollah? Or is it pressure by the US, which is opposed to the idea of diversifying weapons sources for the Lebanese army, in order to keep it dependent on US weapons exclusively?

Lebanon has a prior experience with the US blocking a Russian arms shipment to the army in 2010. Wikileaks documents revealed that the US ambassador in Beirut at the time, Michele Sison, worked with then-assistant secretary of state (current US ambassador to Beirut) David Hill to block the gift. She informed then-Lebanese Defense Minister Elias al-Murr of her country’s objection to the Russian deal which included 10 MiG-29 fighter aircrafts. Murr promised her to do what is necessary to “dilute this” and guarantee that “Lebanon would not accept this delivery before 2040.”