KYIV. March 2 (Interfax-AVN) - Kyiv has expressed satisfaction with the level of cooperation with Russia over a 17-year period on maintaining strategic stability by maintaining the combat duty of Ukrainian early warnings systems (SPRN) in Mukachyovo and Sevastopol in Russia's interests.
"We are thankful to our Russian colleagues for their 17 years of work on SPRN, which promoted strategic stability and peace," a high-ranking military official told Interfax on Friday commenting on the completion of the combat duty of Ukrainian radars in Russia's interests on February 6.
The official pointed out the role of the Sevastopol system in preventing missile threats from countries with "unpredictable regimes."
The official doubted the seriousness of some Russian military officials' statements stating the Ukrainian systems are not sufficiently protected from jamming.
"If Russia wants, we could modernize the station in Sevastopol, which we have more than once mentioned to our Russian colleagues. However, this task has not been set. More over, Russia used this station only to 25% of its working capacity," he said.
The administration of the Russian Space Forces has approved Ukraine's costs on the maintenance of the Ukrainian SPRN systems in Russia's interests in accordance with the appropriate procedures in 2008.
The radar station Dnepr and the early warning systems in Sevastopol and Mukachyovo are property of Ukraine. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreements, information from these radar stations, which monitor the space over Central and Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, goes to the central command post of the Russian Space Forces.
In February 2008, Russia, which is now completing the state tests of the new station Voronezh-DM, unilaterally withdrew from the 1997 Ukrainian-Russian intergovernmental agreement on SPRN (the agreement expired in February 2008).
In August 2008, Ukraine withdrew with a multilateral agreement on SPRN of 1992, whose Article 6 prohibits the signatories from supplying information on its SPRN systems to anyone.
Ukraine is currently working on a strategy for using the stations in the period until 2015. In the future years, Ukraine plans to launch a new SPRN system, which will use new technological solutions.
On February 26, technical maintenance began at the systems in Sevastopol and Mukachyovo due to the completion of their combat duty. After the maintenance is completed, the systems will be put into operation as space monitoring systems.
Russian Space Forces Commander Oleg Ostapenko told Interfax on Friday that a new generation early warning system has been put into operation near Armavir, Krasnodar Territory.
"This station was built because of the need to stop using information received from the obsolete radar stations in Sevastopol and Mukachyovo, which belong to the Ukrainian National Space Agency," he said.
The new station will become "a full-fledged replacement" of the Ukrainian stations.
The radar station near Armavir "is capable of ensuring the necessary radar monitoring of the areas covered by the obsolete Ukrainian stations," he said.
"Thus, the Russian Federation's dependence on Ukraine for strategic information ends with the placement into combat duty of the Armavir radar station on February 26, 2009," said Ostapenko.