UAC Engineer said that a deal for only 5 Su-35s is unlikely,we have to order more if we want Su-35.
Personaly I always doubt large defense item procurement from Russia. Simply because the availability of competitive credit financing. Even before CAATSA, Russia has difficulties provide competitive credit financing. Remember the previous Su-35 contract has to use counter trade deal as compensation no credit financing.
This time around from what I heard, the Russia Sales Agent are offering various scheme to compensate non existance USD/Euro financing. From using Yuan-IDR Financing, to counter trade scheme again. All from I gather not satisfactory solution from Finance Guys perspective.
Still the Pro Russian Defense procurement lobby manage to become contender on procurement for 5 Su-35 as Su-27 replacement. Also they lobbt some upgrade program to make all Su-30 toward MK2 standard. Still if Russia does not want to take that deal due to small population, then it will be harder to find other scheme to finance Su-35.
For that I suspect why J-10 coming into equation. As Russia sales agent in here are come from similar camp with Chinese sales agent, and being support by similar political factions. I do still suspect it is going to use J-10B but with avionics and sensors upgrade to CE standard. PLAF not want to use J-10B as it use Russian AL-31 instead their own WS-10.