Officials who turned over missiles to Russia in the 90s still have influence in Ukraine — interview
According to an investigation by Ukrainian journalists at Skhemy, Russia is striking Ukraine with Kh-55 cruise missiles, which Kyiv handed over to Moscow in a 1999 deal. In an interview with NV Radio on Aug. 11, one of the authors of the investigation, Serhiy Andrushko, expands on the details of the agreement and who was responsible for it.
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NV: How did you manage to establish that Russia is using these very missiles to strike Ukraine?
Andrushko: When it first emerged that Russia had begun to use Kh-55 missiles, I became interested in finding out whether these were the missiles that Ukraine had transferred, as there were contradicting media reports on the matter.
Some argued that this could not be the case, because these were not Kh-55s, but so-called improved Kh-555s. Others said it could be the case. There was, however, no clear evidence.
There were only, for example, reports from The New York Times, referring to information from Ukrainian intelligence. So, I decided to poke around Kyiv archives.
I called one of these archives where this sort of information can be found, and spoke politely with the archivist. And she told me: “You know, we ourselves are very interested in finding these documents about missiles, but we have not found them. If you like, you can of course take the time to walk around and search. We haven’t managed to find them."
Despite this information, I went to the archive and began to search day after day, week after week, month after month. So far, it has turned out that information on this topic is often classified. One of the reasons why there is no name of a president [who signed the deal] or someone else: these documents may exist, but they are classified. Or just not found yet.
The most valuable thing was a list with a series of entries including serial numbers of missiles and numbers of bombers [which Ukraine also transferred to Russia]. There were 11 Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers and hundreds of items of various equipment. Dozens of engines were also added there. And all this together was added to the agreement in a separate appendix.
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These missile serial numbers were the most interesting thing to my editors and me. We began to explore together whether these were indeed the missiles which Russia was using against us now.
NV: You mentioned Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko, during whose tenure all this happened. And you mentioned the president, which, they say, does not appear anywhere, but which we know for a fact to be Leonid Kuchma. You don't need any special documents for this.
Andrushko: That’s true. However, we still rely on documents, on who signed them. And if we are talking about names, then, in addition to Pustovoitenko, there was a whole list of officials who agreed to the transfer of 575 missiles. Among them are those who still exercise a certain degree of influence on our country and its politics.
For example, there is then-Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk, who prepared an explanatory note, drafted this agreement for the Cabinet, and a brief in support of this agreement, signed by Pustovoitenko and [Russian dictator Vladimir] Putin. This document justified everything.
In particular, [the agreement] was justified by the fact that it would be beneficial for the economy, and also that the Ukrainian delegation managed to ensure that Russia would pay for the deliveries. We are talking about $275 million for gas that Ukraine supposedly owed Russia at the time. Tarasyuk, in fact, explained all this.
And, in particular, he explained why this agreement over missiles and bombers did not need to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament.
NV: How did he explain it?
Andrushko: This agreement allegedly concerned the treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons, previously signed [with Russia] and ratified by the parliament.
Tarasyuk now works as Ukraine’s main representative at the Council of Europe.
NV: Did the Defense Minister sign off on this?
Andrushko: He did, indeed. That is, he agreed to it and signed it.
NV: Who was this?
Andrushko: [Oleksandr] Kuzmuk. By the way, he is now an adviser for Territorial Defense Force command, as far as I understand. In any case, this was reported repeatedly in the media. I [will not] state his position, because, unfortunately, Boris Tarasyuk did not find [the time to] explain his rationale.
Kuzmuk, however, did provide a comment. He explained the decision by the fact that both the bombers and Kh-55 missiles had already been decommissioned by the Ukrainian military. They were not in service. And no one at that time could even imagine that this [the current war] could happen. They were also relying on the cornerstone Friendship and Cooperation Treaty between Russia and Ukraine, signed in 1997.
NV: And how did you establish using the serial numbers that these are the specific missiles that are now striking Ukraine?
Andrushko: After we found the list with the missile and bomber serial numbers in the archive, we began investigating this as closely as we could. In particular, [we studied] media reports that provided photos of [the debris] from these Kh-55 missiles [falling on Ukraine]. Some of the fragments had serial numbers intact. And by some miracle, after a few days of work, we identified the first such Kh-55 missile, which had fallen in Kyiv Oblast.
In total, we identified about 10 missiles whose serial numbers were a perfect match with those that were transferred to Russia under the 1999 agreement.
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We were able to identify only 10 of them. One missile struck an apartment building in Kyiv in late 2022. There was a big fire, and a woman died.
Another one hit a city in Kyiv Oblast. Fragments from it hit an apartment and sent a girl to the hospital.
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There were cases when these missiles landed in yards or in lakes, particularly in Kyiv Oblast. In Khmelnytskyi Oblast (one of the latest cases), a missile [with a matching serial number] struck a house. This is something that we have identified with the means we have, using only publicly-available information.
Some of these missiles are stored in the open, at the Institute of Forensic Science in Kyiv.
Despite the fact that they are more than 30 years old, Russia is using these missiles. And this is a huge problem, as they can strike targets anywhere across Ukraine.
NV: Ukraine also transferred 11 strategic bombers to Russia. Do you know anything about them? Are they bombing Ukraine, too?
Andrushko: Some of these bombers were state of the art at the time. They were only a few years old – a year, maybe two for some of them. And it is obvious that they are still in service. Some of them have been identified.
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However, we are still in the process of establishing this more concretely. When we know more, we will let you know.
NV: What is known about these agreements? To what extent was Ukraine really forced to take this step?
Andrushko: In my opinion, no one forced [the authorities]. There was not a single document found by me or other journalists which would indicate that Ukraine was obliged to transfer these strategic bombers and Kh-55s to Moscow.
You must understand that Ukraine did not have any nuclear warheads, as of 1996. And perhaps the majority of them (I did not investigate this issue) were similarly delivered to Russia.
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And when it comes to who is responsible for this decision… that would be the Ukrainian officials in charge at that time. The Western world very much wanted for Ukraine to not have these weapons. They were not opposed to moving them from Ukraine to Moscow. They were not interested in whether they would be scrapped or otherwise transferred to Moscow. As far as I understood, they were interested in them not being in Ukraine anymore.
According to, for example, Yuriy Kostenko, who was the head of the People's Movement of Ukraine [Ukraine’s first nationalist political party] right at the beginning of independence, was just preparing the signing of [the treaty on] the reduction of strategic offensive weapons. If you read this agreement, Ukraine was obliged to reduce its strategic bomber fleet by 30-40%. Let's summarize. As of 1999, Ukraine did not have nuclear weapons, and it was Ukraine's decision to transfer them to Moscow. It was not possible to establish whether this was done at Ukraine’s initiative or Moscow’s. But it is obvious that this particular agreement was not connected with Western pressure.
NV: Because we are not talking about nuclear weapons.
Andrushko: They [the bombers] can carry nuclear weapons. However, there is no agreement in the public domain that directly states that Ukraine had to transfer them to Moscow. It was about gradual dismantling.
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For example, in the Western media, I found articles stating that Ukraine would have to eliminate its strategic bombers by 2021. Other articles named other dates. All this depended on [various] agreements.
In the process of preparing this report, I spoke with various experts. They said that there were proposals to create joint ventures with the United Sates and the Western world for liquidation [of these weapons] or some other options. There were different scenarios, either to send them to the West or to Moscow. However, this is the option that was chosen.
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To understand the context. This was done when Putin had become PM in the summer of 1999, and this agreement was signed two months later. This agreement was signed on the eve of the 1999 presidential elections [in Ukraine].
NV: By disarming itself and strengthening Russia, what did Ukraine get?
Andrushko: Unfortunately, there is a terrible lesson to learn, I think. How can you negotiate with the Russian Federation? This is an instructive lesson.
A year before, Ukraine had signed the friendship and cooperation treaty with Russia, where Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. And it turned out that they would violate this treaty in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea.
Secondly, we still need to find out information about the transfer of tactical nuclear weapons – thousands of nuclear warheads. How much money did they cost? How much could we, as Ukraine, have gotten for them?
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At the same time, in preparing this report, we visited other archives, in particular the audiovisual archive [in Kyiv], where we reviewed many video programs that from that time. Both daily news reports and analytical programs. We found a speech by [Oleksandr] Razumkov at one of these TV programs, who at that time was the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. It was six months before the signing of this agreement, and he was speaking about Sevastopol. He said: "If Russia wants to return Sevastopol, then Ukrainians need to prepare for war."
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
