Events during the July 9-10 visit of NATO Secretary General Javier Solana to Ukraine suggest that Kyiv may be pulling closer to the Transatlantic military alliance partly for financial reasons.
In a letter published by the Financial Times on July 13, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, Volodymyr Vassylenko, rejected the paper’s conclusion that recently appointed Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk has led a ‘subtle shift in Ukraine’s foreign policy’ toward NATO.
‘[Tarasyuk’s recent] remarks [on NATO expansion] just reconfirmed that the strategic course of Ukraine toward integration with European and Euro-Atlantic structures remains unchanged. This course was established and consistently pursued by Ukraine since the early days of its independence,’ Vassylenko wrote.
In fact, the Ukrainian government’s statements on NATO expansion have varied significantly over time, and they have never been as consistently positive as they have been since Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s former representative to NATO, took over the Foreign Ministry.
But NATO’s largesse – especially relative to the main opponent of NATO expansion, Russia – seems also to be playing a role.
After meeting with Solana on July 9, National Security Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin said Ukraine hoped to secure new Western orders for military equipment by increasing cooperation in the military technology sphere and making its equipment compatible with Western standards.
Horbulin, President Leonid Kuchma’s most influential adviser, said such cooperation would take place through Ukraine’s growing participation in NATO’s Science for Peace program. He said the new orders would help stabilize Ukraine’s economy.
In an interview published by the newspaper Den the same day, Ukraine’s representative to NATO, former Defense Minister Kostyantyn Morozov, suggested that Solana’s visit to a massive former missile factory in Dnipropetrovsk was connected to Ukraine’s potential as a producer of military equipment.
‘Now it has become possible to look at Ukraine’s capabilities,’ Morozov said. ‘The interests of the Secretary General of NATO in [the former missile factory] is a certain recognition of the level of Ukrainian industry and its scientific technology.’
Morozov added that Ukraine has proposed modernizing its T-72 tanks for NATO use.
In his public statements in Dnipropetrovsk, Solana stressed the transition at the Pivdenmash rocket and space center to peacetime production, pointing out that the one-time producer of nuclear-warhead-carrying SS-18 missiles is now cooperating with the U.S. company Boeing and a Norwegian company in the Sea Launch ocean-based satellite launching pad, and its former director, Leonid Kuchma, is now president of an independent, democratic Ukraine.
‘Quite recently, [Pivdenmash] was a restricted zone, but I stand here and this is convincing proof to me that there must be no restricted zones in Europe in the 21st century,’ the Interfax news agency quoted Solana as saying.
Solana also touted the Science for Peace program, which he said is expanding in Ukraine and already involves 250 Ukrainian scientists. But Solana stressed that the program aims at retooling old military plants to peaceful production.
Horbulin said Solana was visiting Pivdenmash because ‘the person responsible for stability and security in Europe just has to visit the world’s most effective center for the development of space rocket systems,’ but he also stressed Solana’s interest in employing Pivdenmash for non-military production.
Solana’s purported interest in the Pivdenmash plant as a potential supplier of military equipment may have been nothing more than speculation, which is rampant in the Ukrainian press. But it was clear the Ukrainians are eager to sell.
Also during Solana’s visit, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk touted a military training ground in Western Ukraine that has been used for exercises conducted under NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.
‘The training grounds are ready for tender, and their unique quality is the availability of runways suitable for aircraft of all kinds, as well as of nearby areas useful for division-scale exercises.’ Kuzmuk said Ukraine has forwarded a proposal on the grounds to NATO headquarters in Brussels.
The BBC reported that Ukraine is competing with Macedonia to provide NATO with its primary training grounds in Eastern Europe.
