Ukraine awaits results of big deal

The United States has offered Russia financial aid to complete the construction of an anti-missile early-warning radar near Irkutsk, which will be able to detect the launch of ballistic missiles targeted on Russia, The Financial Times reported the Monday before last. This decision is on of Washington's steps to persuade Russia to agree, in its turn, to make amendments in the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, to which Ukraine is also a party. Official Kyiv is as yet in no hurry to make public its stand in the Moscow-Washington dispute, also a fact acknowledged by Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Volodymyr Horbulin.

Washington has long insisted that the 1972 ABM Treaty be modernized. The amendments would allow the US to deploy an anti-missile defense system capable of protecting almost the whole US territory from possible, if only individual, missile attacks by countries presenting a threat to America, such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The treaty now in force allows the US and Russia each to cover only one 100-km-radius area with an anti-missile umbrella. Moscow is so far rejecting the amendments.

Russia says in this case the US will have a de facto superiority in the case of a possible nuclear missile conflict, which in turn jeopardizes strategic stability. Moscow does not accept Washington's argument that the new American ABM system is too weak to counter a massive nuclear missile attack by Russia. So parity, as they say in the US, remains.

As to Ukraine's position in the dispute between two of Kyiv's strategic partners, Mr. Horbulin defined it as follows: “Our delegation in Geneva (it is the seat of the continuing anti-missile defense talks —Author) holds a position of principle: if the United States decides to put into practice a so- called theater ABM system, Russia will have to at least agree to it.

“We can understand the Americans who always feel the breath of some, let us say, anti-American regimes that are working, quite successfully, on the construction of missiles. I think we must work with both sides to find a compromise. This is too complex a problem to be resolved quickly. On the other hand, I am aware both of the US side's determination to opt for producing an ABM system and of the diplomatic (and non-diplomatic) measures Russia might take in reply. We must wait.”

While Kyiv waits, Washington is actively searching for alternatives which might sugar the pill of a revised ABM Treaty for Moscow. Since Russia's dissatisfaction is, first of all, based on its financial inability to update its own anti-missile system, the US is offering Moscow the most tempting things.

Besides completing the construction of the powerful radar base near Irkutsk, the US has even expressed readiness to finance the launching of additional Russian military satellites to keep watch over US nuclear missile sites. So that Russia feels calmer.