The accidental shooting down of a Russian airliner over the Black Sea 11 days ago highlights the dangerous state of disrepair of Ukraine's cash-starved military machine and its dilapidated Soviet-era weapons, experts said yesterday.
The fallout from the mid-air explosion onboard the Sibir airlines Tu-154 flight from Tel Aviv on October 4th, in which all 76 passengers and crew died, could tarnish Ukraine's relationship with NATO, and bring Kiev nearer to Moscow, one senior general warned.
After a week of strenuous denials and equivocation, Ukraine's Defence Minister, Mr Olexander Kuzmuk, acknowledged on Saturday that a misfired S-200 missile downed the aircraft, which was carrying mostly Israeli citizens.
"The Ukrainian army is in a terrible state, more than 75 per cent of its weapons are really ancient," said Mr Leonid Polyakov of Kiev's Razumkov Centre for political and economic research.
The suspect S-200 missile, made in 1979 and three years short of being scrapped, was a typical example of the outdated hardware still being used in the former Soviet republic where almost all the anti-air defence systems date from the 1970s, according to defence experts.
"It's sad to say, but since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, we have not bought a single missile battery and have done very little in the way of modernisation," Gen Vadim Grechaninov said. "The dramatic accident risks a serious deterioration in Ukraine's relationship with NATO, and could bring Kiev closer to Moscow," the retired general added.
In 1997, NATO and Ukraine signed a special partnership accord in which the alliance called on Kiev to renovate its armed forces, although it offered no money, only technical expertise, towards the task.
Ukraine's defence budget for 2002 is $800 million (€870 million) when "at least $1.2 billion is needed" to keep its military hardware fully operational, according to an analyst, Mr Valentin Badarak. However, annual expenditure on renovating weapons hardware stands at only $100 million, Mr Badarak added.
"So what do you expect when one Russian S-400 battery, up-to-date and in top working condition, costs $70 million," he said.
Apart from missile batteries, radar systems are a key element in national anti-air defence, and may have been at fault in the mistargeting of the Tu-154.
Ukrainian experts say the country produces high-quality systems at its Iskra factory in the central city of Zaporizhiye.
"In the past five years, seven mainly African countries have bought these Ukrainian systems, but due to a lack of money we can't afford to equip our own army with them," said Mr Badarak.