nid Kuchma had authorized the sale of four Kolchuga radar systems to Iraq at a July 2000 meeting with Valery Malev, head of the state arms export agency Ukrspetsexport. The U.S. accusations were based on the authentication of a short excerpt from the recordings made in Kuchma’s office in 1999-2000 by Mykola Melnychenko, a member of the State Protection Directorate of the Security Service (SBU).
The U.S. announcement came seven months after the Kolchuga allegations were first made public by Ukrainian opposition politicians, and coincided with the launch of opposition protests. The timing here was unfortunate since it gave rise to suspicions that the United States was using the Kolchuga revelations to support the opposition. This apparently led two Communist deputies to defect to the pro-presidential majority.
The U.S. announcement also came in the same week that it unveiled its controversial new national security strategy, which calls for preemptive first strikes against rogue states that possess weapons of mass destruction and strive to “acquire dangerous technologies.” Military analysts believe that the United States is likely to go to war with Iraq, with or without a UN mandate, though preparations for the attack are unlikely to be ready before January-February.
In the meantime, pressure on Ukraine to come clean on the alleged Kolchuga sales to Iraq may be intended to allow an assessment of the potential threat to U.S. and British air forces during the planned conflict. There are already suggestions that such a threat exists. Western military sources report that an unmanned drone was shot down for the first time in Iraq after Ukraine allegedly sent the Kolchugas. Although Kolchugas are mobile and easily concealed, U.S. officials have hinted they already possess satellite evidence of their presence in Iraq. The Financial Times reported on Oct. 21 that Stephen Pifer, a deputy assistant secretary of state and former ambassador to Ukraine, had told a conference in Washington earlier this month that the United States possessed evidence pointing to the presence of Kolchugas in Iraq that it was not yet willing to make public.
It certainly defies belief that the United States would unleash such an international scandal with only the authenticated tape to back up its allegations. The recent visit of the international team of experts to Ukraine probably had less to do with tracking down missing Kolchugas than with obtaining intelligence on how they operate.
Strategic partner no more
The Kolchuga scandal marks the end of trust in Kuchma internationally. During the second half of the 1990s, Ukraine was the third largest recipient of U.S. assistance after Israel and Egypt. Now Ukraine’s former strategic partner has stated in diplomatic language that it does not believe anything Kuchma and his team say.
Faith in Ukraine’s word was seriously undermined when the Ukrainian authorities first denied outright that the issue had even been discussed in July 2000, and then they backtracked and suggested the conversation had indeed taken place but the Kolchugas had not been dispatched. On the eve of the visit by the U.S.-British inspection team to Ukraine, Presidential Administration head Viktor Medvedchuk ordered a test of excerpts from secondary copies of the tapes available on the Internet. This test reached the conclusion that the tapes were doctored after all. The official line is constantly being changed in line with the needs of the moment and, by now, has lost all credibility. The new conclusion is maybe intended as an insurance policy in case the investigative team concludes that Kolchugas were dispatched to Iraq.
Kuchma’s claims to be an innocent victim wrongly accused are undermined by his administration’s mishandling of the entire Kuchmagate affair and the Melnychenko tapes. Kuchma initially blocked the creation of an investigative commission into the Iraqi arms allegations in the previous parliament and has only agreed to it after U.S. accusations.
Ukraine’s relations with Iraq have long aroused suspicion. The prestigious military publisher Janes reported in April 1999 that U.S. intelligence had discovered that Ukraine had signed a secret military agreement with Iraq back in November 1998. The agreement called for the export of arms camouflaged as “agricultural” produce, a scheme that was discussed at the July 2000 meeting. Kolchugas were released from export restrictions four days after the meeting. In October 2000 an agreement on trade, scientific and technical cooperation was signed with Iraq, which was ratified by parliament in November the following year.
A key figure in Ukraine’s long-standing relationship with Iraq was Kharkiv businessman Yury Orshansky. Orshansky promoted the products of the military plant Khartron in Iraq. According to the newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli, Orshansky had close relations with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and as Iraq’s honorary consul was “leader of the Iraqi lobby in Ukraine.” The SBU supported Orshansky’s accreditation over objections by the Foreign Ministry, and Orshansky’s credentials were only removed in September after the U.S. allegations. The newspaper claimed that SBU chief Leonid Derkach was a frequent visitor to Orshansky’s home in Kharkiv.
Finally, the very convenient death of Malev in a car accident on the eve of the first revelations of the Iraqi scandal last March is also bound to raise suspicions.
Ethiopian, Russian connections
Ukraine has claimed that it sold three Kolchugas to Ethiopia. It is still to be ascertained whether the systems are still in that country or if Ethiopia was simply used as an intermediary in deliveries to Iraq. The United States and Britain are also likely to ask whether Ethiopia has any need for Kolchugas even if it could afford them. Ethiopia’s main security threat comes from Eritrea, which relies on a long tradition of guerrilla tactics and World War I style mass infantry assaults, rather than air power.
According to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Ethiopia’s military expenditure in 2000 was only $730 million. Would such an impoverished country really spend nearly a seventh of its military expenditure on Kolchugas to counter a threat from Eritrea, which itself only spent $167 million on its military in 1999?
There have also been attempts to shift the blame on the Russians. Melnychenko himself has claimed that a high-ranking Russian official was present at the July 2000 meeting, but he refuses to give his name. An anonymous Ukrainian official later told Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian service that it was Russia, not Ukraine, that sold the Kolchugas to Iraq. Although this, in itself, would appear to be an admission that they had been sent to Iraq, the Russian version had still not been upgraded, while Ukraine’s was ready.
Ineffective arms controls
Another argument Ukraine has used to deflect attention from U.S. accusations on Iraq is that its arms exports are subject to tight controls. This is simply not the case. Ukraine’s arms exports are highly non-transparent. Throughout the 1990s there have been repeated accusations that Ukraine’s arms have ended up in conflict zones such as Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Yemen, Sri Lanka and Peru. Last year, a Ukrainian cargo aircraft loaded with arms was detained in Bulgaria on route to Eritrea.
In 2001, Derkach and National Security and Defense Council Secretary Yevhen Marchuk were exchanging accusations, with each claiming the other had been involved in illegal arms exports. Marchuk, who perhaps oddly does not appear to be compromised in any way on the Melnychenko tapes, claimed that he had prevented transactions organized by Derkach but refused to be more specific. The accusations swapped by Derkach and Marchuk centred on Ukrainian gunrunners such as Leonid Minin, who had operated throughout the 1990s but were apprehended by Italian police in 2000 and are now awaiting trial in Italy. According to the Financial Times and other sources, Minin delivered huge quantities of arms in 1999-2000 to Sierre Leone in defiance of UN resolutions.
Regardless of whether any Kolchugas are ever found in Iraq, the ramifications of the Iraqi scandal are enormous. The United States has announced that its authentification of the tape on Iraq will influence its views as to the authenticity of the remaining hundreds of hours of tapes in Melnychenko’s possession. It will be interesting to see how the Ukrainian authorities react to further authentifications of the existing tapes and others yet to be revealed.
Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto. He is joint editor of the recently published Ukrainian Foreign and Security Policy.
