KYIV, May 30 – Ukraine will cut its armed forces by 40,000 servicemen to 370,000 over the next five years, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
Serhiy Nahoryansky, the ministry spokesman, told Reuters the cuts would be made under the ex-Soviet state's new military reform concept. The first 10,000 servicemen would go before the end of this year, he said.
'We have proposed this new concept of reforming our armed forces in the light of profound changes in the political and military situation in Europe and planned reforms in NATO,' Nahoryansky said.
The ministry was also planning to drop Soviet-era compulsory military service and put the army on contract footing by 2005, he said. Today, some 25,000 soldiers and sergeants serve on contract in Ukraine.
Ukraine, eager to come out of the shadow of its former imperial master, Russia, has built cordial relations with the NATO.
Unlike Moscow, Kiev has never shown any resentment to NATO's eastwards expansion and expressed only muted criticism of its air campaign against Yugoslavia last year. Russia froze relations with the bloc over the strikes.
Ukraine formed its national armed forces after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 on the basis of some 780,000 Soviet troops then stationed on its territory.
