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| Russia |
| Ukraine’s Military Struggles With Problems, Hoping to Join NATO |
| 2004-05-20 |
| Ukraine has tried to use its army to promote the country in a positive light. It has sent peacekeeping missions to the former Yugoslavia and Africa. It also maintains one of the largest coalition contingents in Iraq, with 1,600 troops. But despite such efforts, its record has been blighted again and again by horrific accidents with tragic consequences. Earlier this month, on 6 May, a fire began at a military depot in Melitopol, a city in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhya. The fire touched off eight days of explosions which brought death and havoc to an area covering 400 square kilometers." .... An estimated $450 million in damage was done by the time the explosions died down. .... The list of Ukraine’s military catastrophes includes the explosion of another ammunition dump last October, in a blast that killed a teenage girl and destroyed much of the base where the ammunition was stored. It also includes the accidental strike on a Kyiv apartment block with a Scud missile. And a Ukrainian missile that inadvertently shot down a Russian civilian airliner, killing all 78 people aboard. And the crash of a fighter plane performing stunts at an air show, which killed 76 spectators. The bad news continued in March, when Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk announced several hundred missiles were unaccounted for. .... Ukraine’s military, with 355,000 men and women, is Europe’s largest army and the world’s 13th biggest. But it ranks 126th in the world in terms of funding per capita. .... Ukraine can decommission about 23,000 tons of ammunition each year but needs to double or triple that capacity --something that Ukraine’s feeble economy does not allow. .... Marchuk has promised reforms aimed at eventually turning Ukraine’s huge conscript army into a compact, professional force. Such reforms are essential if Ukraine is to stand a chance of joining NATO, an ambition declared by Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma two years ago. Last week, Kuchma outlined a plan to pare the military down from its present size of 355,000 men and women to 285,000 by the end of 2005, and to 200,000 by end of 2006. ... the majority of senior military officers and politicians favor their country joining NATO -- something that could give reforms a boost. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |