A little while ago I blogged that an unusual arms deal had been exposed in the Ukraine - the sale of some eighteen Kh-55 (Russian terminology)/AS-15 KENT (Western) strategic cruise missiles to China and Iran by the Kuchma government, back at the time of the 1999 agreement on the handover of strategic air materiel to Russia. The story has been confirmed to the Washington Post, with the relief-inducing remark that the nuclear warheads were not sold with the missiles: artificial sunshine was apparently an optional extra on this model. The Washington Post, it seems, agrees with me that Iran might deploy them or weapons developed from them on their Sukhoi-24 FENCER aircraft. Thanks for that, Post..
There are some names, too. The prosecutor in the case claims a Russian, Oleg Orlov, and a Ukrainian, E.V. Shilenko, were the names on the falsified end-user certificate. Time to go over the files, methinks.
1 comment:
The group behind the X-55 deal and many other international crimes has been investigated at this site
http://left.ru/burtsev/index_en.html
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