Head of Russian state-run technologies corporation Rostec said on Monday that his country has lifted an embargo from supplies of weapons and military hardware to Pakistan.

“Russia is negotiating the delivery of several helicopter gunships Mil Mi-25 to Pakistan,” Sergey Chemezov said, The Voice of Russia reported.

“The decision has been taken and we are negotiating the delivery of the helicopters,” he said.

Chemezov further noted that choppers Mi-35 were on agenda of talks.

The Mil Mi-24 is a large helicopter gunship and attack helicopter and low-capacity troop transport with room for eight passengers.

In NATO circles, the export versions, Mi-25 and Mi-35, are denoted with a letter suffix as “Hind D” and “Hind E” respectively.

The Mi-24 attack/transport helicopter is manufactured by the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, based in Moscow, Russia. It entered service with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, and more than 2,500 have been produced.

The Mi-24 has been deployed in a number of conflicts including Afghanistan and in Chechnya.

The Mi-24 is in service with Russia and countries of the ex-Soviet Union and has been exported to Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, the Ivory Coast, Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, North Korea, Peru, Poland, Vietnam and South Yemen.

10 Mi-35 helicopters were delivered by Russia to the Czech Republic in 2005/2006 as part of a debt repayment.

Later versions of the Mi-24P are armed with anti-tank missile systems.

In 2005, ten Mi-35M helicopters were ordered by Venezuela. The first batch of four was delivered in July 2006, the second four in December 2006. Indonesia placed an order for six additional Mi-35s in late 2006. In October 2008, Brazil ordered 12 Mi-35M attack helicopters.

Russian Army Mi-24s are being upgraded with new avionics including thermal imagers. Other upgrade packages are available, including that of Denel/Kentron of South Africa which includes Eloptro infrared sighting systems and Kentron Mokopa anti-tank missiles, and IAI Tamam which has HMOSP (helicopter multi-mission optronic stabilized payload) with FLIR, TV and autotracker, embedded GPS (global positioning system) and cockpit multi-function displays.