KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has refuted foreign media reports alleging Ukrainian involvement in the arms supply to terrorist fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
"Ukraine does not manufacture and has not purchased FN-6 air defense missile systems made in China mentioned by those reports and has not provided their transit. Besides, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other units have never been armed with FN-6 MANPADs," the ministry press service said in a report on Friday.
The media said the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry had seized an ISIL fighter who alleged the terrorists were buying weapons from Ukraine.
"The government has not vested the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Ukrainian Armed Forces with the powers to mediate foreign trade operations in exports and imports of military and special-purpose products and services," the ministry said.
Foreign media reports quoting the official news agency of Kuwait said that the Kuwaiti police had arrested Lebanese citizen Osama Khayat, the leader of a terrorist group recruiting ISIL fighters and raising funds which were transferred to ISIL-related bank accounts in Turkey. The Kuwaiti Interior Ministry also said that Khayat "was closing arms deals with Ukraine and used Turkey as a route for shipping the weapons to ISIL fighters in Syria in the territory controlled by the group."
The media also said that Chinese-made FN-6 FeiNu air defense missile systems capable of destroying aircraft at an altitude up to 3.5 kilometers were allegedly bought from Ukraine.
Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman for the army operation in Donbas Andriy Lysenko said that Ukraine had never procured MANPADs from China and had not armed its servicemen with such weapons.
"Considering the existence of temporarily occupied territories in Ukraine and the uncontrolled stretch of the state border with Russia, one may assume that Chinese-made MANPADs could have fallen into the hands of terrorists from there," Lysenko told reporters on Friday.
He also said he possessed information that the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics had started production of certain types of armaments and ammunition in addition to repairing military hardware.
"We also allow for the possibility that the so-called 'humanitarian convoys' from Russia are taking raw materials and other component parts for making explosives and explosive devices to the occupied Donbas territory. We know for sure that they are used in terror attacks in the territory of Ukraine. We do not rule out that the terrorists may ship them abroad with the same purposes. In order to stop the deliveries of weapons to terrorists it is critical to close the state border section uncontrolled by the Ukrainian authorities," Lysenko said.