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Opinion
August 25, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
Whitewashing Ukraine’s murky arms smuggling industry
Graham Stack in Berlin
Ukraine’s blitz inquiry into and dismissal of re- ports that Ukrainian rocket engines are driving North Korea’s developing nuclear programme are unlikely to convince many, as the Eastern Euro- pean 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 sup- plied North Korea with the engines that power its intercontinental ballistic missile that could appar- ently reach the US.
“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine – probably illicitly,” missile expert Michael Elle- man of the UK’s International Institute for Strate- gic 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 Se- curity and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchinov, reported back to Ukrainian President Petro Po- roshenko 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 interna- tional transfers of military and dual-use goods excludes the possibility of transferring such goods to the countries which are under respective sanc- tions 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
Photo released by North Korea’s state news agency in July of what it said was a ballistic missile.
two countries closest to getting the bomb that are at loggerheads with the West. Indeed, Ukraine’s track record of such incidents since independ- ence 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 with Kazakhs, as having master- minded 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 investiga- tors 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 substan- tiate 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 un- der 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,