The National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Meetings opening in Dallas, Texas was scheduled for Friday, with a Russian company linked to a recently sanctioned Russian billionaire attending, ABC News reports.
Tula Cartridge Works, based in Tula, Russia, sells small-arms ammunition to a U.S. private company called TulAmmo, headquartered in Round Rock, its factory, one of Russia’s oldest and largest arms plants, is tied to a number of entities and individuals who have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, including Rostec, Russia’s state-owned defense conglomerate, and Igor Rotenberg, an oligarch who was recently targeted alongside several other allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The convention, always a political spectacle, this year comes as the NRA’s connections to Russia have become the focus of media attention amid a Senate inquiry into allegations that Russian agents may have tried to use the gun-rights group to gain access and influence in U.S. political circles, but TulAmmo USA’s presence raises a somewhat different set of concerns.
“I suspect TulAmmo USA has stayed on the right side of U.S. sanctions laws,” said Peter Harrell, a former senior State Department sanctions official who is now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “But there is something deeply troubling about a Russian arms maker — one that makes Russian military assault rifles and anti-tank missiles — profiting by selling ammunition in the U.S. The fact that a portion of those profits flow to some of Putin’s closest cronies makes the situation even more problematic.”
“I suspect TulAmmo USA has stayed on the right side of U.S. sanctions laws,” said Peter Harrell, a former senior State Department sanctions official who is now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
“But there is something deeply troubling about a Russian arms maker — one that makes Russian military assault rifles and anti-tank missiles — profiting by selling ammunition in the U.S. The fact that a portion of those profits flow to some of Putin’s closest cronies makes the situation even more problematic,” he added.
