A tender was held in Greece between September 5 and 20, the winner of which will build twenty amphibious military personnel carriers.
Ukraine’s quest for the contract looks a bit like a detective story. Ukraine’s ships did not make it to Greece to show their advantages over their rivals. As it turned out, the ships Donetsk and Slavutych did not have official permission to go through Turkish territorial waters.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Defense Ministry, and Ukrspetseksport (Ukraine’s official arms export monopoly) refuse comment on this incident. There is information that right before the Donetsk’s departure Kyiv was not unanimous about wisdom of such a step. Highly advertised military and technical projects with Greece could complicate other large-scale plans like cooperation with Turkey, which is to announce a tender in November on 1000 tanks worth $2-4 billion. Ukraine expects to win this tender, and thus it is not worth irritating Turkey by supplying landing crafts to Greece, which will most definitely use them in Cyprus or the Dodecanese Islands, if it again comes to blows with Ankara. However, Ukrainian National Defense and Security Council Head Volodymyr Horbulin is certain that there was no argument over the Donetsk: “It is just that the ministries and departments did not cooperate adequately. I think the mistakes will be corrected in the immediate future – within a month.”
Yevhen Fomenko, the deputy director of the executive unification at More, where the ZUBR landing crafts are made, hinted that the Donetsk’s failure to visit Greece did not at all Ukraine was giving up its perspectives with Greece.






