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Ukraine to Transfer Missiles to Russia for use in Space Program
By Associated Press
posted: 05:15 pm ET
10 October 2002
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KIEV, Ukraine (AP) _ Ukraine is planning to sell Soviet-made intercontinental ballistic missiles to Russia for use in its space program, officials said Thursday KIEV, Ukraine (AP) _ Ukraine is planning to sell Soviet-made intercontinental ballistic missiles to Russia for use in its space program, officials said Thursday. Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers decided Wednesday to transfer the RS-18 missiles _ called SS-19s by NATO _ to Russia, said government spokeswoman Larysa Ostrolutska. She wouldn't elaborate on the details of deal. Eduard Kuznetsov, Deputy Director of the National Space Agency of Ukraine, told the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency that the missiles would be sold to Russia's state-controlled Khrunichev State Research and Production Center, which plans to use them for launching satellites. The sales are expected to start this year and be completed by the end of 2003, ITAR-Tass said. The report did not say how many missiles were involved or how much Ukraine would charge for them. Ukraine's space agency took over 31 of 130 SS-19s that were deactivated when the former Soviet republic renounced nuclear weapons and transferred all its 1,300 nuclear warheads to Russia for destruction in 1996, ITAR-Tass reported. Ihor Kholevynksyi, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said that none of the missiles belong to Ukraine's armed forces because Ukraine committed to eliminate its nuclear arsenal, which was the third-largest in the world after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukrainian space officials were not immediately available to comment on the deal. Leonid Polyakov, a military analyst at the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies, a respected think tank in Kiev, dismissed concerns that Russia could convert the missiles back to military use as ``total nonsense.'' Khrunichev, Russia's premier rocket manufacturer, has bought some decommissioned SS-19 missiles from the Russian military to convert them to the civilian booster Rokot intended to launch commercial satellites. But many other SS-19s, each carrying six nuclear warheads, have remained on duty with Russia's Strategic Missile Forces.
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