Ukraine seems to be still recovering from shock and becoming aware that it was a pipe dream to join the club of the world’s leading players in the aircraft industry. It seemed only recently that the An- 70 Ukrainian-Russian joint project, in which Ukraine holds a 70% stake, stood a good chance to win a tender for supplying military transport planes to the Bundeswehr. German Minister of Defense Rudolf Scharping never concealed his delight over the Antonov Design Bureau aircraft. This plane, dubbed in the West the “symbol of the end of the Cold War,” made its maiden flight in 1997 and was given the go- ahead by the former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The plane drew applause at the Le Bourget air show near Paris. But then...
Our aircraft builders suddenly received a joint statement of the ministers of defense and security of France and Germany, who met June 9 in Mainz, Germany. As announced in Mainz, the governments of both countries decided to purchase respectively 50 and 77 A400M European military cargo planes. Last May Great Britain also expressed the desire to acquire 25 of these aircraft, still on the drawing board and scheduled to takeoff only in 2005. Also interested in purchasing the A400M are Spain, Belgium, Turkey, and Italy. In other words, the European NATO member-states have opted for a new-generation plane with a cargo capacity twice as large as the American C-130 and with a speed 30% faster. Its only drawback is that it so far exists only on paper.
Kyiv and Moscow may get poor consolation if the Mainz negotiators suggest that Ukrainian and Russian companies be involved in building the European military transport plane. Another consolation is that the Americans also failed.
However, this raises other questions. For example, why did the Ukrainian side, when founding the joint Ukrainian-Russian project, not foresee this likely course of events? What chance does the An-70 have on the European market and elsewhere? For it is unlikely that anybody in the former USSR will be able to buy these $50-million airplanes. The only remaining hope is the markets of third countries, but can the West be expected to cede these markets just out of respect for our geopolitical position? The Russian newspaper Izvestiya expressed a view that if this plane were purely Ukrainian, it would have better chances to make its way to the West. There is perhaps a grain of truth here. For, despite all assurances of strategic partnership, none of the Western countries wants any form of dependence on Russia. Thus Ukraine could well have made a mistake in betting on cooperation with Russia or maybe not, because the An-7X project was one of the few opportunities for the West to attract Russia to peaceful cooperation.
The An-7X project was only supported in the West by German companies, which was by no means enough, for France never concealed its resolute opposition, and the Gallic word counts in the European aerospace industry.
Perhaps Ukrainian and Russian representatives were not at their best during the talks, failing to sell their prospective clients on the advantages of the joint production of their brainchild.
Europe’s own interests proved decisive: this is also one of the explanations. It is obvious that Europe’s own industry, companies, and factories in Toulouse, Nantes, and Munich need orders, and it this would be far easier to justify to their own taxpayers. In addition, Ukraine and Russia are not considered reliable partners; there were also serious fears it would be impossible to organize maintenance of the new plane up to Western standards, etc.
However, this may be not the final lesson for Ukraine. In particular, the new T-84 tank has met fierce Russian competition on foreign markets. Ukrainian reps often lack knowledge of the market situation and the ability to make plans and to hold negotiations, especially when their “strategic partners” from Russia compete using all means fair and foul.
One more thing is also obvious: partnership between Ukraine and the EU, Ukraine and NATO, so much talked about, does not in fact exist. There are no other promising projects for cooperation of An-7X magnitude. And the real truth is that Ukraine is left to lick its wounds on its own.
