Ukraine's Proliferation Skeletons

WASHINGTON, DC -- Recent stories about the alleged sale of 12 former Soviet nuclear-capable unarmed air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) to Iran and China - six to each nation - by Ukraine advance a long unfolding slow-motion scandal, but still leave many questions unanswered.

Allegations of Ukranian arms sales to Iran and other countries have been around for years. For example, in November 2002 lawmaker Hryhoriy Omelchenko, a former reserve colonel in the Ukranian intelligence service, promised to lay out "proven facts" of Ukraine's arms sales "not only to Iraq, North Korea, China and Iran", but even other states, according to his office. Omelchenko is the same legislator who went public last month in letters to President Victor Yuschenko and the prosecutor general, Svyatoslav Piskun, with allegations of the smuggling operation.


Kolchuga Air-Defense Radar
The 2002 charge came at the same time that Ukraine was in the news for a scandal over the alleged sale of Kolchuga air-defense radars to Iraq. It was then feared that the radars could be used to track Western aircraft in Iraq's no-fly zones.

Former president Leonid D Kuchma himself was implicated several years ago in the sale of a highly advanced radar system to Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime. On secret recordings made by a former bodyguard in the president's office, likely in the summer of 2000, a voice resembling Kuchma's approved of the sale of the Kolchuga radar system through a Jordanian intermediary.

The United States, as well as outside experts, authenticated the controversial tapes, which also suggested Kuchma's complicity in the murder of an opposition journalist. Kuchma has repeatedly denied any role in those crimes.

While there is no definitive smoking gun that Iraq received the Kolchuga systems, the presumption is that it must be considered likely, according to a report by a joint US-United Kingdom team.

Interestingly, this was at the same time that US Special Operations Forces had been ordered to launch operations against arms supply lines to terrorists and the three rogue nations referred to by President George W Bush as the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

But apparently they did not know about the missile sale to Iran or were not authorized to conduct an operation against it. The larger point, however, is that Ukraine, under Kuchma, was widely known as a willing supplier of weaponry.

Since taking office in January after the "Orange Revolution", Yushchenko has promised to investigate illicit weapons-dealings, including the allegation that election rival Kuchma approved the Kolchuga radar sale to Iraq.

Ukraine's intelligence agency, the State Security Service (Sluzhba Bespeky Ukrayiny - SBU), launched its investigation of the case involving Iran and China on February 14, 2004, during Kuchma's presidency. It announced last year that it had "exposed and curtailed the activities of an international criminal group of arms traders who intended to export from Ukraine 20 air-launched cruise missiles".

But the probe was not publicized until this February, when lawmaker Omelchenko wrote Yushchenko asking him to pursue a full investigation.

According to Omelchenko, in 2000 Russian national Oleg Orlov and a Ukrainian partner identified as E V Shilenko, also a Russian national, exported 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles through a fake contract and end-user certificate with Russia's state-run arms dealer and with a firm called Progress, which is a daughter company of Ukrspetseksport, Ukraine's weapons-exporting agency.

Orlov and Shilenko used the Ukrspetseksport state company to convey to Progress a forged contract on behalf of the Russian federal state arms company Rosvooruzheniye and an end-user certificate purporting to be from the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation for the delivery of 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles to that country.

Omelchenko's letter says the cruise missiles were concealed in the arsenals of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, although in documents signed by senior ministry officials they were listed as having been destroyed.

Ukrainian weapons dealers ferried missiles to China through a Ukraine-based cargo company run by a former secret service agent, according to Omelchenko. He also said that in 2001, weapons dealers sent ground targeting systems, maintenance equipment and missile technicians to Iran. Profits from the sales were estimated at US$2.1 million or more.

Reportedly, Sarfraz Haider, an Australian businessman of Afghan-Iranian origin, said to be part of the arms trafficking gang, was killed, according to his family and a Ukrainian police report. He lived in Canberra and Sydney before moving to London and then Cyprus in 2000.

His family originally believed his death in Cyprus last year was the result of a motorbike accident. But after an autopsy on Haider's body, the family now believes he was murdered. His neck had been broken and his aorta split, and there were signs of a struggle. The family claims Iranian agents paid Cypriot police to eliminate Haider because he knew too much.

It still is not clear exactly what kind of missiles were sold to Iran and China. Press reports say it was the Kh-55 Granat. But according to GlobalSecurity.org there are actually three versions; the Kh-55, Kh-55-OK and the Kh-55SM.

Production of the stretched-range version, the Kh-55SM, began in 1986. This was fielded in the 1990s. The modification provided for increased range, giving it an estimated reach of 3,000 kilometers. The Kh-55 has been in Russian service since 1984 as a nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile and can carry a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead. It is the Soviet counterpart to the US AGM-86 ALCM. It was originally deployed with strategic bombers Tu-95 MS and Tu-160.

Yet according to the SBU, some of the ALCMs were of the Kh-55 as well as the Kh-55SM types. Who the Kh-55 missiles went to is unclear.

Iran does not operate long-range bombers, but it is believed Tehran could adapt its Soviet-built Su-24 strike aircraft to launch the missile. The missile's range would put Israel and a number of other US allies within reach.

After the collapse of the USSR some of the missiles and their carrier aircraft remained beyond the limits of Russia, in particular, in Ukraine and in Kazakhstan.

Yet according to Bohdan Ferents, the lawyer for Volodymyr Yevdokimov - director of a cargo company, Ukraviazakaz, and one of at least six arms dealers secretly indicted in January for the missiles sale - the missiles were a far cry from being operational.

In an article in the March 5 issue of the Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli, he says: In the first place, they were items made in 1987. Their service life is eight years. According to the technical specifications and instructions, their service life can be extended only if the factory designers are directly brought in - in other words, if there is a technical inspection, involving either a visit to the place where the missiles are stored or an inspection at the factory itself. Since 1992, the storage of these missiles has not, unfortunately, matched the requirements. The technical and process documentation for the missiles was removed from Ukraine to Russia - which makes it impossible to sell them for their original purpose. All the warheads - let's regard them as the weapon's main component - were sent off to Russia. Not a single warhead remains on Ukrainian territory.
This raises the intriguing possibility that what actually transpired was not a sale but a con.

Ferents said: "We call them 'items'. The evidence presented in the case material and tested in court enables one to talk about a typical swindle with regard to the intentions of Iran and China, which are trying to obtain weapons. In other words, the negotiations were about cruise missiles, but what was exported was mere junk."