The dismissal of Torianin, after less than a year in the MiG post, was linked to financial difficulties the company was experiencing in fulfilling a contract to India, the newspaper Kommersant reported Monday.

The Russian government signed in January a contract for the sale of 16 MiGs to India for some 700 million dollars.

Fedorov is the current president of MiG's rival Irkut, an aerospace conglomerate partially controlled by the state whose products include the Sukhoi fighter jet and the Be-200 multipurpose amphibious jet.

Fedorov owns 26.7 percent of Irkut.

The change at the top of MiG could reinforce the control of Rosoboronexport, the public agency that regulates arms sales, on MiG, which has the right to independence in contract deals, Kommersant said. In exchange, Rosoboronexport could supply much-needed financial means to MiG, it said.

Analysts in the arms sector are expecting MiG to sign soon a contract worth some 900 million dollars for the delivery of 50 MiG-29s to Algeria.

The MiG orders with India were part of a 1.5-billion-dollar deal signed between Russia and India in January.

Russia was India's main defence supplier during the Cold War years and still accounts for more than 70 percent of the military hardware used by India, although the Indian government has increasingly been looking to Europe, Israel and the United States for defence equipment.

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