In its June 30, 2006 White Paper on nonproliferation, the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Government openly accused Ukraine of violating the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which limits proliferation of longer-range missiles and relevant technologies. (See related story on the White Paper in this issue of WMD Insights.) When presenting the White Paper to the public, Vice-Premier, Minister of Defense, and Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission Sergey Ivanov repeated the accusation. He clarified that “in 2000 and 2001, during the tenure of Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, a Ukrainian company ‘Progress,’ a subsidiary of ‘UkrSpetsExport’[the Ukrainian state arms export organization], sold six cruise missiles Kh-55 to China and six more such missiles to Iran.” Ivanov characterized that deal as a “blatant violation of MTCR.” [1]

The Russian accusations caused anger in Ukraine. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Vasili Filipchuk announced that Ukraine was strictly following the guidelines of the MTCR and does not condone violations of the regime’s rules. The cases to which Ivanov referred, he added, were discovered by Ukrainian law enforcement organizations and the crimes were committed by “international criminal groups,” with the participation of citizens of Ukraine, Russia, and Australia. Accordingly, Ukraine rejected the Russian accusations that it had violated the MTCR and called the accusations an attempt to “create an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust toward Ukraine in the run-up to the G-8 summit [held July 15-17, 2006, in St. Petersburg].” [2]

The MTCR restricts transfers of missiles able to carry a 300 kilogram payload to a distance of 500 kilometers or more. Soviet-made Kh-55 long-range air-launched cruise missiles (NATO designation AS-15 “Kent”) were developed for deployment on Tu-95 heavy (strategic) bombers (each intended to carry between 6 and 16 missiles depending on modifications) and on Tu-160 heavy bombers (intended to carry 12 missiles). The system, whose capabilities place it well above the MTCR threshold, has a range of 3,000 kilometers and, in the Soviet arsenal, carried a nuclear warhead with a yield of 200 kilotons (ten times larger than the weapon that destroyed Nagasaki).

In addition to violating the rules of the MTCR, the transfer of these missiles to third countries would also violate the “non-transfer” provisions of START I (a treaty on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms signed in 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union; Ukraine became a party to that treaty after it became an independent state). [3] As many as 1,612 Kh-55s remained in Ukraine after the break-up of the Soviet Union. [4] All of the missiles were to have been destroyed in Ukraine and/or sold to Russia. It is not clear why Russia did not address the possible violation of START I in its White Paper. (In its 2001 and 2005 reports on the compliance of foreign governments with their arms control obligations, the U.S. Department of State determined that Ukraine was in compliance with its obligations under START I.) [5]

The cases of illegal export of cruise missiles were discovered by the Security Service of Ukraine in 2004 and made public by Prosecutor General of Ukraine Svyatoslav Piskun in the spring of 2005 after the conclusion of an investigation. [6] The first transfers of Kh-55s case took place in 2000 and involved Oleg Orlov, a Russian citizen and businessman who lived in the Czech Republic, and Vladimir Yevdokimov, a former official of the Security Service of Ukraine and later Director General of “UkrAviaZakaz” company. They exported six cruise missiles to China using a forged certificate that stated the missiles were to be transferred to Russia. In 2004, Orlov was arrested in the Czech Republic and extradited to Ukraine. Yevdokimov was arrested in Ukraine and in the summer of 2005 sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The second case took place in 2001 and involved Valeri Malev, a former head of the Ukraine’s state-owned arms export organization, “UkrSpetsExport” and an Australian citizen named Khaider Sarfraz. (According to its website, UkrSpetsExport, the “State Company for Export and Import of Military and Special Products and Services, is the only organization authorized by the Ukrainian Government to implement the export potential of the military industrial complex of the Ukraine.”) Both Malev and Sarfraz subsequently died, allegedly in car accidents, Malev in 2002 and Sarfraz in 2004. [7] The two perpetrators exported cruise missiles to Iran also using a forged end-user certificate that stated the missiles were to be transferred to Russia.

A parallel investigation into the matter by a Ukrainian parliamentary committee, conducted after the November 2004 “Orange Revolution” that brought reformist President Viktor Yushchenko to power, strongly implied that that senior officials of the Ukrainian government during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma had knowledge of the transactions. In a January 2005 letter to Yushchenko, Hrihory Omelchenko, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian parliamentary committee on organized crime and corruption and leader of the investigation, declared, “These cruise missiles were hidden in military depots of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry under the control of [the Defense Ministry] and under documentation signed by senior officials of the ministry, saying they were in fact designated as destroyed.” [8] Omelchenko also stated that his investigation was being thwarted by officials who had served in the government of former President Leonid Kuchma, a charge that implicitly raised questions as to whether the investigation by Prosecutor General Piskun had fully exposed the possible role of higher level officials in the Kuchma government.

In late March 2005, Petro Poroshenko, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, declared the 2000-2001 missile sales were not endorsed by the Ukrainian government at the time as official policy. “We`re not talking about a crime carried out by the state of Ukraine,” he said. “There`s no evidence that this sale was sanctioned.” [9] Nonetheless, he also announced that he had ordered the Defense Ministry and Ukraine’s secret police to make a full account of the disposition of the country’s Kh-55 arsenal. [10] In April 2005, President Yushchenko confirmed that the 2000-2001 sales had taken place. [11]

Insufficient information is publicly available to determine whether the Kuchma government was sufficiently involved in the missile sales to sustain the Russian charge that Ukraine violated the MTCR in 2000-2001 or whether the export of the Kh-55s was merely the work of criminal conspirators, operating independently. However, given that the missiles were among the most powerful in the world and were the subject of strict accountability procedures under START I (which required their destruction or transfer to Russia) and given the role of Ukraine’s official arms export agency in some of the sales, there is reason to suspect that senior Ukrainian officials were involved in the illicit sales. Russia did not allege that Ukrainian violations of the MTCR were continuing.

Nikolai Sokov – Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies