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54 Opinion KYIV BLOG:
Whitewashing Ukraine’s murky arms smuggling industry
Graham Stack in Berlin
Ukraine’s blitz inquiry into and dismissal of reports that Ukrainian rocket engines are driving North Korea’s developing nuclear programme are unlikely to convince many, as the Eastern European country’s defence sector remains a black market swamp.
A New York Times article of August 14 reported the international intelligence community’s concerns that “illicit networks” based in Ukraine had supplied North Korea with the engines that power its intercontinental ballistic missile that could apparently reach the US.
“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine – probably illicitly,” missile expert Michael Elleman of the UK’s International Institute for Strategic Studies told the NYT. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”
On August 22, the head of Ukraine’s National Security
and Defence Council, Oleksandr Turchinov, reported back
to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on an immediate inquiry that had been set up into the NYT’s allegations. The main finding of Turchinov’s report was that Ukraine’s “existing system of state export control over the international transfers of military and dual-use goods excludes the possibility of transferring such goods to the countries which are under respective sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council”.
But the NYT article was not the first time that Ukraine has been linked to breaches of the UN sanctions regimes on North Korea and Iran – the two countries closest to getting the bomb that are at loggerheads with the West. Indeed, Ukraine’s track record of such incidents since independence in 1991 makes Turchinov’s findings look like a whitewash.
Sanctions breach
As recently as 2013, the UN Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts pinpointed a group of Ukrainians, in partnership
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with Kazakhs, as having masterminded an attempt in 2009 to smuggle 35 tonnes of North Korean weaponry out to Iran in breach of sanctions. The attempt failed when Thai police raided the plane carrying the arms in Bangkok, sparking
a major international scandal.
The key individuals identified by the UN investigators were Ukrainian national Iurii Lunov, manager at Ukrainian firm GST Ukraine, and his partner, Kazakh air cargo operator Aleksandr Zykov, owner of air cargo firm East Wing, formerly called GST Aero. The Panel of Experts recommended that they be placed under UN sanctions for their role. Lunov and Zykov denied involvement, claiming they were set up, but have so far failed to substantiate their arguments.
Ukraine has still conducted no investigation of its own into the activities of Lunov and GST Ukraine. GST Ukraine continues operating today, albeit under different management. None of this was even mentioned in Turchinov’s report.
But what is most scandalous is that Lunov’s GST Ukraine was and is registered at the very same address as Ukraine’s State Expert Control Service, the state body tasked with combating
“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine – probably illicitly”
arms trafficking: vul Frunze 19-21 in Kyiv (recently renamed as vul Kirilivska). This makes Turchinov’s claim that the existing system of state export controls precludes such illicit transfers dangerously wrong.
When this correspondent gate crashed the GST Ukraine office in the autumn of 2014, I saw folders bearing the name Yushmash Avia – the air cargo division of state-owned rocket engine builder Pivdenmash (Yushmash in Russian), which