Into what hands will aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich, the flagship of Ukraine’s defense industry since the Soviet era, fall? The company is in the process of changing owners, but it is hostage to a silent battle between China, the United States, Russia and, now Turkey, which has expressed its interest – for the president Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky, who wants “An army meeting NATO standards” Faced with the Russian threat, Turkey, a member of the Atlantic Alliance, has become an ideal partner.
Motor Sich is the historical supplier of the Russian army, equipping its Mi-8 helicopters as well as its Antonovs, and it exports a wide range of machinery for civil and military aircraft. On March 11, Kiev announced its nationalization. Under pressure from the United States, the authorities kicked out the majority shareholder, the Chinese Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, from the Xinwei group. The Ukrainian State Security Agency assures that the decision was confirmed by the courts on March 20. Skyrizon, however, turned to an arbitration body, and claims 3.6 billion dollars (2.9 billion euros) in compensation.
It is a 100% takeover of the company’s capital by the State which is planned, confirm the World several government sources in Kiev. But for now, they say, only a freeze has occurred. “We did what we could, now it’s in the hands of the lawyers”, confides a source within the Ukrainian security services.
Heavy corruption
“Nationalization has been announced, signed. It has not been completed for the moment due to internal struggles within the Ukrainian military-industrial complex ”, explains Mathieu Boulègue, expert from the Chatham House Institute in London. In a sector marked by high corruption, the national defense complex UkrOboronProm «estuck in a vast reorganization while foreign players in the sector are victims of geopolitical games ”, summarizes M. Boulègue.
“We don’t use the word ‘nationalization’. Only the Bolsheviks speak like that. It is a legal procedure to obtain justice, because the company had been privatized illegally ”, assures Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. The Chinese investor would not have sought the agreement of the anti-monopoly committee of Ukraine when it acquired the majority of the engine manufacturer.
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