KYIV. Jan 16 (Interfax) - Inspectors from the Royal Thai Army will be in Ukraine on January 16 to conduct technical acceptance of yet another consignment of Oplot Main Battle Tanks made at Malyshev Factory in Kharkiv under a contract to supply 49 tanks to Thailand, which was signed in 2011, a spokesperson for the state company Ukrspecexport said.
"The Thai delegation will start working to accept a new consignment of Oplot Main Battle Tanks on Monday [January 16]. The customers will also inspect tanks whose production is currently at various stages of readiness," according to a statement on the company's website.
Upon mutual consent of both parties, the contract deadline was moved to the fall of 2017, Ukrspecexport said. "This consensus-based decision was made due to hostilities in eastern Ukraine," the spokesperson said.
Recently, the Thai newspaper Bangkok Post, citing Commander-in-chief of the Thai Armed Forces Chalermchai Sittisat, said that Bangkok and Beijing were working on plans to expand bilateral military-technical cooperation.
Among the promising areas are Thailand's purchases of Chinese armored vehicles to replace U.S. M41s Thailand bought from the U.S. in 1957, the Thai high-ranking military said. Thailand has already signed an agreement with China to buy 28 Chinese VT-4 vehicles and is planning to increase the supply in 2017. The Thai high-ranking military official also said that a decision had been made to reduce purchases of Ukrainian Oplot tanks and instead buy Chinese armored vehicles due to the domestic situation in Ukraine. At the same time, he said that Ukraine is to deliver all 49 Oplot tanks Thailand bought earlier before October 2017. Meanwhile a number of foreign media reported that Thailand had ostensibly dropped its plans to buy the Ukrainian Oplots in favor of Chinese VT-4s due to the domestic situation in Ukraine.
The Oplot Main Battle Tank, created at the Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, entered service in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in May 2009, with the first two tanks supplied to the Ukrainian army. An over $200 million contract for the supply of 49 Oplot next-generation tanks to Thailand was signed in 2011 and in April of 2012 Malyshev Factory began implementing the contract. According to the factory, setting up the serial production of Oplots cost $30 million. The first five machines were shipped to the Thai customer in early 2014, another five in December 2015, and ten more in the spring of 2016. Yet another shipment of armored vehicles of undisclosed quantity was delivered to Thailand in July 2016.
In 2014 Ukraine was forced to suspend a number of contracts to export primary military equipment and shipped it to the conflict zone in Donbas. Supplies under the suspended contracts resumed in 2015-2016 thanks to a planned increase in production capacity at the state concern Ukroboronprom.