I more think Russian army will buy few hundred Centauro or more possible Freccia. It is in 25 ton class and they could buy them for filling the gap before Kurganets is developed and ready for production to form one or two medium wheeled brigades. It is not amphibious, so I assume, they will be stationed in regions, where this capability is not so needed. For other regions they will have domestic Kurganets, BTRs and BMPs.
I disagree. Without amphibious capability... they might as well use upgraded T-72s... which aren't amphibious either and have better cross country mobility and heavier armour.
Up to now, Russia is not buying only in few examples for testing, what they want from West. They buy 4 Mistrals, they buy 60+ Iveco LMV and want to buy 500 Panhard VBL for border guard units. I don't know if the deal for VBL goes through or if any of them come in Russia up to now.
The Mistrals were a knee jerk reaction to the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia... they realised how vulnerable the Kurile islands and indeed claims to polar regions were because they learned the West would not support them and would act against them verbally, if not in actual action.
This meant that they needed proven vessels quickly... they didn't have the 10 years it would take to design and then test and then put into production a Russian vessel, so they bought a modern proven up to date example off the shelf.
With the Iveco they aren't even for the Army and the reason there was the urgency of Sochi being in 2014. Boomerang-10 and Tigr-M couldn't meet the timeline... and they did buy 10 and tested them.
Talk of buying PVP for border guards is still just talk.
I will repeat... this is just testing and evaluation and will not lead to Russian Army purchases.
The change to light, medium, and heavy brigades has been planned for 2015-2016... and there is no urgent reason to put into service any stopgap vehicle.
If they wanted a light armoured vehicle with a tank gun there is Sprut... which in my opinion is better than a wheeled vehicle with a similar gun... this Italian vehicle is not amphibious and is too heavy to be air dropped... and likely does not have armour superior to the Sprut either.
I think it is time to shake up the MoD and kick out the guys who is pushing forward all these foreign purchases by ignoring the Russian developers and not supporting them.
X2
Actually for many missions I would think a 125mm gun would be over kill and a Boomerang-25 with a high velocity 57mm gun might be a much more useful vehicle. If you want full anti tank capability then mount 4 external launchers for Kornet-EM...