KIEV – Ukraine is selling tons of weapons these days: new or used, high-tech or low, suitable for police actions or middle-sized wars, sometimes legally, and sometimes with very few questions asked.
Macedonia is only the most recent Ukrainian arms shopper. Faced with sometimes U.S.-armed Albanian insurgents better equipped than the Macedonian army, Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski this summer turned to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma for more firepower, delivered cheap and fast.
Four Ukrainian transport helicopters, crews, and support staff already were serving in Macedonia on contract. Ukraine sold the choppers to Macedonia in June, throwing in rocket pods, munitions, and – according to Ukrainian news reports – mercenary pilots in the bargain.
Since then, reports indicate, Ukraine sold Macedonia four attack helicopters, four ground attack jets, a dozen truck-based rocket launchers, and an undetermined number of reconditioned tanks.
Sales were so brisk that European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana spent a week in Kiev in early August convincing Kuchma to turn off the weapons tap, so as to effect a Macedonian ceasefire.
Ukrainian officials refuse to say how much Macedonia paid for all the 1980s-vintage Soviet weaponry. Independent estimates place the value of the deal at between 20 and 40 million dollars.
“We adhere to all international agreements,” responded Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko when asked by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa whether Ukraine sold weapons to pariah countries like North Korea or Libya. “We sell no weapons to states under international sanction.”
But independent Ukraine – a country unaligned either with Russia or NATO – has customers aplenty for the products produced by what used to be the heart of the Soviet Union’s military-industrial complex.
The Ukrainian government declared its arms export proceeds for 2000 at just about 1 billion dollars. International organisations rate Ukraine variously between the top ten and twenty arms exporters world-wide.
The T-84UD tank, a direct descendent of the rugged World War II T- 34, tops the product list. Ukraine’s main battle tank costs 2.5 million dollars, roughly half of comparable German or U.S. models.
True, the T-84UD tank is less-well-armoured and equipped with more primitive optics than western competition. Nevertheless Pakistan already paid 650 million dollars for 320 T-84UDs, Ukraine’s biggest single arms deal to date.
A sweetener to the deal, typical of the way Ukrainian weapons merchants do business, was the dispatch of Ukrainian technicians to Pakistan to set up a tank assembly line there.
Ukraine now wants to sell more T-84UDs, equipped with a NATO cannon and modern optics, to NATO member Turkey. The contract, also sought by the U.S. and Germany, is worth 7 billion dollars. Ukraine is competing in similar tank tenders in Greece and Malaysia.
Unlike the competitors, Ukraine has no anti-war activists or Congresses that might hold up the sale because of objections to Turkey’s human rights record, Ukrainain arms merchants note.
Egypt earlier this month chose Ukraine to overhaul 450 wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APCs), and the United Arab Emirates reportedly wants the same for 700 of its own. Jordan last year bought 50 APCs new. Greece bought a pair of hydrofoils for its navy.
Angola is a big customer of used weapons, in recent years buying ground attack jets, tanks, and ammunition from Ukraine. Sierra Leonne and Liberia operate Ukrainian military transport aircraft. Uganda reportedly paid 28 million dollars for 62 1950s-vintage tanks.
Then there are places Zlenko says Ukraine doesn’t export to.
UNITA rebels – the opponents of preferred Ukrainian customer Angola – say they have received Ukrainian tanks, APCs, assault helicopters and surface-to-surface missiles. The U.S. last year accused Ukraine of selling small arms and ammunition to Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Russia has charged Ukraine of doing the same for Chechen rebels.
NATO navy forces in April intercepted a ship carrying 30,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 400 guided missiles, and 32 million rounds of ammunition from Ukraine to Eritria. Italian police eventually arrested a pair of arms dealers born in Ukraine.
Kuchma recently admitted 32 billion dollars of Ukrainian military equipment has found its way illegally into international arms markets in the last decade. Zlenko and other officials say criminals, rather than the Ukrainian government, did the exporting.
Three years ago, opposition politician Serhy Odarych published a detailed list of Ukrainian arms exports in the My newspaper. He also published the names of the Ukrainian officials allegedly involved in the transactions.
After warning Odarych to stop, an unidentified man shot Odarych in the leg. Odarych survived the attack, but he stopped publishing the newspaper.
If the recent NATO-engineered cease-fire in Tetovo falls through, Ukraine could well restart its arms exports to Macedonia, Zlenko said.
