ANALYSIS "Bigger mistakes have been made" - Kuchma's answer to the air disaster (10/21/01)

ANALYSIS

"Bigger mistakes have been made" - Kuchma's answer to the air disaster

by Taras Kuzio

As the finger was being pointed more and more frequently at Ukraine last week over its shooting down of a civilian air- liner President Leonid Kuchma sought to play down the disaster by saying "bigger mistakes have been made." Mr. Kuchma told Russia's ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, that "the missile of the Ukrainian armed forces does not understand the Ukrainian language." This was a bad joke at the wrong time.

This drew bitter condemnation from Israel: "When it's not your people then, yes, you can make those academic observations," a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said. "But the fact is that 78 people, most of them Israelis, were killed or died and, therefore, for us it's a major tragedy."

What does this attitude show us about the lingering legacy of Soviet political culture among Ukraine's ruling elites? Ukraine's leaders and, particularly the president, tried to lie, would not take responsibility for their actions and refused to apologize for mistakes they have made.

Let us recall that the same thing happened in the town of Brovary, near Kyiv last year when the military authorities admitted firing a missile into an apartment building only after evidence was shown to them of the missile parts.

Likewise, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no respect for human life when the Kursk submarine sunk.

Missile? What missile?

The Tu-154 plane flying from Tel-Aviv to Novosibirsk with 78 people aboard exploded at 1:45 p.m. local time on October 4. When the plane went down the United States immediately pointed the finger at a Ukrainian missile. However, Kyiv strenuously denied that it was at fault.

Russian investigations into the downing of the Russian passenger airliner located missile parts in the wreckage a week ago that confirmed earlier U.S. claims that a surface-to-air missile had caused the accident.

The first counterclaim alleged that the Ukrainians had no missile test taking place at the time. Although Ukrainian authorities denied on the day after the accident that any of their missiles brought the airplane down, the time at which the accident happened corresponded to when Ukrainian air defense troops on the Crimean peninsula were firing anti-aircraft missiles at artificial targets. Ukrainian officials continued to deny that their missiles possessed the necessary range as the aircraft was hit 250 kilometers out at sea while the missiles allegedly had a range of only 30 kilometers out to sea and one kilometer in the air (the aircraft fell from an altitude of 11 kilometers).

President Kuchma and Defense Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk demanded that the United States provide satellite intelligence to back up its claim of Ukrainian complicity. Mr. Kuchma claimed that the accusations against Ukraine were "absolutely groundless"! The missiles allegedly had no warheads (which contradicted information that the exercise used live rounds) and were equipped with self-destruct systems that went into action if the missiles diverted from the target.

Finally, a few days later at a press conference, Air Force Commander Volodymyr Tkachev presented video recordings of the Ukrainian-Russian live-fire exercises that took place at the time of the crash of the Russian airliner. He admitted that one S-200 missile had been fired at the time of the crash and had landed about 80 kilometers from the Black Sea shore. This was further out than the earlier claims of only 30 kilometers, but still far from where the plane had gone down.

Vladimir Komoedov, commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, also admitted that two of the missiles "went beyond the horizon." One of these may have not self-destructed and hit the airplane. This also was only a half admission.

We now know that what the United States had said is true. The airliner was shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 anti-aircraft missile, which is capable of hitting targets at a distance of 250 kilometers and at an altitude of up to 300 meters. In other words, President Kuchma and Ukraine's military authorities knew all along that the missiles being fired in the exercise were capable of hitting the airliner.

The commission investigating the crash admitted that the airliner was within the missile's range after all. The S-200 complex homing system had registered the airliner - instead of the unmanned reconnaissance plane - as the actual target. The airliner had a much larger reflecting surface and the S-200 homing system caught a stronger signal, which was presented on the radar screen as the target.

The missile hit the airliner within three minutes of being fired, releasing 10,000 steel contact elements that acted as shrapnel. The plane fell to sea killing all on board.

Ukrainian-Russian military exercises

We now know that the missiles were fired during a Ukrainian-Russian military exercise in Crimea that involved air force, air defense, navy, missile, and artillery units, as well as coastal border troops. Surface-to-air missiles were fired from S-200, S-300PS, S-125, BUK, OSA and KUB systems. MIG-29 fighters hit targets and tactical R-300 missile defenses were fired. New equipment, including a new radar system for air defense units, a radar jamming battalion and a new radar station in Cape Omuk in eastern Crimea, were being tested. The missiles themselves were of Soviet vintage and unreliable.

The Ukrainian armed forces, in contrast to domestic security forces, are very under-funded and accidents are quite common. The 2002 defense budget provides only $750 million (amounting to only 1 percent of the gross domestic product), while another $160 million is to be received from the sale of military equipment and other commercial activities. The Ministry of Defense had requested a minimum of $1 million to maintain combat effectiveness and military capabilities, but this will not be provided because the authorities feel greater security threats from domestic sources and therefore direct resources to non-military security forces in the Security Service, presidential guard, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Border Troops.

Such a low military budget makes it impossible to either purchase new arms or maintain research and development into new programs. Hence, Soviet-era arms and missiles are still being used by both the Ukrainian and Russian armed forces, making it likely that further accidents will occur.

Soviet political culture

In an opinion poll conducted in September by SOCIS in Ukraine only 10 percent of respondents said they trust Mr. Kuchma - and this was before his attempt at shirking blame for the shooting down of the civilian airliner. The number reflects the degree to which the elites and the population live two different worlds, just as in Soviet times. Ever since the "Kuchmagate" scandal, President Kuchma has been living cut off from the public, in a world that has little to do with reality or the concerns of ordinary Ukrainian citizens.

To his credit, the vice-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Viktor Medvedchuk, demanded on October 11 that Ukraine's military leaders resign and take responsibility. However, President Kuchma refused to accept the resignation of the defense minister, saying he refuses to let "valuable people" go. The commander of the air defense forces, however, did resign. As is usually the case in Ukraine, he will probably obtain a new, no less important, position elsewhere.

President Kuchma's response was to admit that "somebody will have to bear responsibility."

Mr. Kuchma has not once indicated in his presidential position that he should bear responsibility for his disastrous record in office, the illegal actions he has undertaken (as suggested by the Melnychenko tapes) and the impoverishment of the population. When protests have taken to the streets, as happened in March, the president described them as "manifestations of terrorism" that seek to "intimidate the authorities, to cause panic in society, to stir people to oppose the authorities." These comments show how he does not understand what a liberal democratic system is and does not understand the rights and responsibilities that the state and citizens have to one another.

"Kuchmagate" shows that President Kuchma and Ukraine's ruling elites are still Soviet - not Ukrainian - in their political culture. Remember how many different lies were told in reaction to the Melnychenko tapes? And, the murder of journalist Heorhii Gongadze still has not been solved. How long did it take the president to finally admit that the voice on the tapes was his but that it was allegedly edited to make him sound bad?

This culture of lying is coupled with an inability, left over from the Soviet era, to take responsibility for one's actions. Its never the head of state who is at fault; it's always the government, the Parliament, Russia or the communists. Add to this a culture of secrecy that still pervades anything remotely related to military affairs - a ridiculous state of affairs considering the fact that satellites know everything that is going on (as we saw with U.S. finger-pointing at Ukraine after the downing of the TU-154).

The least Ukraine can now do is apologize officially to Israel and pay compensation to the victims. Let us hope this will happen.

Taras Kuzio is a research associate at the Center for International and Security Studies at York University, Toronto.

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