ANALYSIS

New developments in sale of Kolchuha radar to Iraq?

by Roman Kupchinsky
RFE/RL Crime and Corruption Watch

A highly placed Ukrainian government official who insisted on anonymity told RFE/RL in Kyiv that President Leonid Kuchma did tell the head of the Ukrainian arms sales company, UkrSpetsExport, to sell a Kolchuha radar system to Iraq, but the system was never delivered. However, the source stated, Russian arms dealers learned of this incident and sold and delivered a radar system comparable to the Ukrainian Kolchuha to Iraq.

Asked about this version during a press conference in Kyiv on September 27, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, replied that Russia's possible role in the sale will be investigated. According to available information about the Russian Kolchuha program, the Signal Enterprise in Tambov was involved in upgrading the original Donetsk-made Kolchuga radar system and finished this project in April 2001. The Ukrainian Kolchuha underwent its own upgrading much earlier and it is purported that it was the newer version of the Ukrainian Kolchuha that President Kuchma gave the orders to sell to Iraq on July 10, 2000. Thus, in 2000 the Russian version of the system was not ready to be sold.

According to some analysts in Kyiv, the "revelation" that Russia sold the Kolchuha to Iraq is but another ploy by the current presidential administration to protect Mr. Kuchma if the early earning system is proven to be in Iraq.

On September 24, The New York Times reported that the U.S. State Department had authenticated a taped conversation between Mr. Kuchma and the head of UkrSpetsExport, Valerii Malev, during which the president gave the go-ahead to covertly sell four Kolchuha passive radar systems to Iraq for $100 million.

President Kuchma and the Ukrainian government vehemently deny that the sale took place.

Roman Kupchinsky is the editor of RFE/RL Crime and Corruption Watch.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 13, 2002, No. 41, Vol. LXX

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