Historically, Ukraine has been among the world's ten biggest arms exporting nations. And the country is not about to give up its hard-gained bridgeheads on the weapons market. In 2003, Ukrainian exports of defense products and related services increased by close to 30 percentage points from the previous year. In the defense export structure, a trend had become visible towards a sustainable growth in the share of newly-made high-tech products at the cost of so called "surplus" weapons from the Defense Ministry arsenals. In an interview with Defense Express military publication, Yuri Prokofyev, the head of the presidential Committee on Military-Technical Cooperation and Export Control Policies, is speaking on specific features of Ukraine's strategy for managing that highly sensitive business: Q: How does the Committee assess the results of 2003 with regard to defense exports? Which of Ukraine's export deals could be rated among the most successful? A: The results of 2003 with respect to defense exports reveal a trend towards a growth in both revenues earned by Ukraine from military-technological cooperation deals with foreign players on the market for defense commodities and related services, and towards an intensification of promising lines of activities, which allows us to see into the future with a high degree of optimism. The qualitative growth in Ukrainian special item exporters' accomplishments suggests that the domestic military-industrial complex has embarked on the innovative path of development, and that its products are highly-competitive and matching the highest world standards. For that matter it should be pointed out that defense exports increased 23 percentage points as compared to the previous year. This is a good testament that certain difficulties that Ukrainian special item exporters encountered on the global weapons market in 2002 have been overcome. Ukraine's overall strategic approach to cooperation in military technology could be condensed to ... Читать далее