The war of words over Ukraine’s role as one of the world’s top 10 arms exporters and in supplying weapons to Georgia is heating up.
The Ukrainian arms industry is in the firing line.
The war of words over Ukraine’s role as one of the world’s top 10 arms exporters and in supplying weapons to Georgia is heating up – at least with the Kremlin and Moscow-friendly Ukrainian lawmakers.
Results of an investigation to be made public in early November will likely take a swipe at Kyiv’s pro-Western president, Victor Yushchenko. And Russia has jumped on the recent seizure by Somali pirates of a Ukrainian ship laden with weapons to paint Ukraine as a shady arms merchant and undermine Yushchenko’s international reputation.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called Ukrainian arms deliveries to Georgia “a crime” and “an attempt to set Russians and Ukrainians against each other in armed conflict.”
Much ado about nothing, defense experts counter.
“I see no problem with the deals,” said Mykhailo Samus, assistant director of the Center for Army Conversion and Disarmament Research, a think tank based in Kyiv. “It was normal military-technical cooperation between two independent states.”
Top Russian officials and members of the Ukrainian parliament’s temporary investigatory commission into the deliveries to Georgia have accused Yushchenko of actively supporting the Georgian attack on South Ossetia. Put more harshly, Moscow accuses Yushchenko of participating in the killing of Russian soldiers by delivering huge numbers of weapons in the run-up to the four day war in August.
Also nonsense, presidential allies say, citing Kremlin hypocrisy in supplying more arms to Georgia than Ukraine.
The international arms transfers database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute records a significant increase in deliveries from Ukraine to Georgia, starting in 2004, according to information through 2007. Deliveries include tanks, helicopters, surface-to-air missile systems and anti-tank missiles.
Unofficially, pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper Izvestia produced a table detailing a massive increase in deliveries for 2007 and, especially, mid-2008, including tanks, Grad multiple rocket launching systems and machine guns.
Ihor Alekseyev, a Rada deputy from the Communist Party and the special investigation commission’s deputy chairman, said he has the proof.
“We have documents that show that from May to July 2008 there was intensive delivery of weapons to Georgia. The conclusion from this is that he [Yushchenko] knew what was being prepared [the Georgian attack on South Ossetia],” Alekseyev said. The six-member panel includes no presidential allies.
More nonsense, say independent arms experts.
The deliveries are “not evidence that the Ukrainians knew of a plan for Georgia to act against south Ossetia at the beginning of August,” said Paul Holtom, a Ukrainian arms trade expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “With no arms embargo in place, the delivery of weapons is a matter of agreement between the exporting country and the purchaser.”
Holtom said Ukraine and Georgia have had arms deals going for the last few years, officially reporting transfers to the United Nations and in Ukrainian national export reports.
Ukraine inherited huge stockpiles of weapons when the Soviet Union split in 1991. Export revenues have hit $1 billion annually.
Besides selling off old Soviet weapons, Ukrainian companies also manufacture parts, including engines for Chinese airplanes and Russian helicopters.
Serhiy Bondarchuk, director of state-owned arms exporter Ukrspetsexport, said that the share of the Ukrainian-Georgian military-technical collaboration reached 6 percent last year, while the Russian-Georgian military figure was 28 percent. Moreover, Ukraine in recent years has exported much more to Moscow than to Tbilisi. Experts estimate that Russia accounts for around 25 percent of Ukraine’s arms exports.
Nevertheless, Alekseev accused Yushchenko of secretly selling the Buk-M1, a Russian-made, surface-to-air missile system. The weapon was reportedly used to shoot down Russian planes over Georgia. Putin has also claimed that Ukrainian personnel were in Georgia operating the weapons.
Anatoly Hrytsenko, chairman of the parliamentary committee on security and defense and former defense minster, said his committee investigated many of these claims in August and “discovered that [Ukraine] did not deliver many of the weapons they accused us of delivering.”
Although Alekseyev’s special investigation commission is due to present its findings on Nov. 6, many have been leaked to the press, giving further ammunition to those who say politics is behind the probe.
“I am skeptical about the professional level of the commission,” said Kyrylo Kulikov, a lawmaker within the pro-presidential bloc and former Interpol chief in Ukraine.
Alekseyev complained that the commission’s work had been hindered at all levels of government.
He also criticized lack of transparency in the arms industry. “We have a very different system [of arms exports] from any other civilized country in the world. There is a direct vertical line from the president,” Alekseyev said.
The nation’s arms export industry has been at the center of international scandals before, most notably in 2002 when the United States accused Ukraine of selling radar systems to Iraq. In the 1990s, weapons were delivered to Liberia in defiance of a United Nations embargo.
A similar suspicion was voiced again recently after Somali pirates seized a Ukrainian vessel transporting Soviet-era T-72 tanks, spare parts and ammunition to Kenya on Sept. 25. Some media reports have alleged that the tanks were in fact heading for South Sudan.
Ukrainian officials and its arms exporter denied wrongdoing and said Kenya was the final destination.
