“At this stage, the United Nations is in possession of no evidence that the Ukrainian government has sent any shipments of materiel to the UNITA insurgent movement. But the latter is known to keep its arms purchase channels secret; it more often than not deals via intermediaries and shadow economy operators,” Andres Mollander, head of a UN Security Council team of experts to adhere to sanctions against UNITA guerrillas in Angola, announced in Kyiv on January 26. Mr. Mollander visited Ukraine while on a tour of Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Russia, countries being the principal exporters of Soviet-made conventional weapons which somehow or other find their way to the Angolan insurgents. The aim of UN experts’ talks with officials in these countries is basically the same: tracking down illicit arms supply routes and, of course, blocking them. In fact, Mr. Mollander flew to Kyiv in the aftermath of information received by another UN official visiting Angola, Robert Fowler, who recorded complaints of the Angolan government military about alleged arms shipments from Ukraine (see The Day, January 18). The military stressed that such shipments — tanks and artillery — came from Eastern Europe, despite UN sanctions banning arms supplies to UNITA in effect since 1993. Kyiv rejected the accusations and responded to media reports to the same effect late last year.
“We officially declared that the Ukrainian government had not supplied, nor had it authorized any supplies of arms or munitions to UNITA. This is our principled stand. We are prepared to cooperate with relevant UN Security Council bodies to detect possible routes of such illegal shipments. During the talks we once again informed our counterparts about the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s initiative: holding a conference under the auspices of the UN Security Council, involving arms-producing countries, to discuss ways to block arms supplies to the areas of conflict,” declared Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Chaly after meeting with Andreas Mollander.
The results of the talks between UN officials and leaders of Eastern European countries will be included in the report to be heard by the UN Security Council in a month or two.
However, is it possible to completely refute the allegation that throughout Ukraine’s independence no weapons from Ukrainian arsenals have found a way to UNITA — for example, through those same intermediaries? The more so that Ukraine has a military-technological cooperation agreement with Angola? When asked this, Mr. Chaly replied “The graveyard is perhaps the only place where you get an absolute guarantee.” And noted that the Ukrainian government is primarily interested in investigating illegal arms shipments to UNITA.
To make using Ukraine as a transit territory for illicit weapons supplies impossible, Kyiv enforced harsher control over the documents accompanying transit weapon freight last year.
