UAE denies arms sales to Ukraine despite Kiev's confirmation
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has denied reports of selling military supplies to Ukraine despite earlier statements by senior Ukrainian officials confirming an arms deal with the UAE.
“An agreement on cooperation in defense technologies the UAE and Ukraine signed recently does not stipulate any contracts for deliveries of weaponry to the Ukrainian side,” said Faraj Faris al-Mazrouei, an adviser to UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as cited in a Friday report by the Emarat Al-Yawm news portal.
According to the report quoting al-Mazrouei, the deal signed between Ukraine and the UAE was only one element in a future system of cooperation between the two nations in the field of military technologies.
The development comes as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said earlier this week after a meeting with top UAE officials that military technical-cooperation agreements were signed to bolster Ukraine’s arms industry, which he said would secure several export orders.
He further described the deals as “extremely important, so we have the money to modernize our armed forces.”
Additionally, Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian interior minister, stated in a post on his Facebook page that the UAE-Ukraine deal would include “the supply of certain types of arms and military equipment to Ukraine” by the UAE.
Press reports have also cited the Ukrainian president as saying that Kiev signed nearly 20 contracts on arms supplies at the recent International Defense Exhibition fair, IDEX-2015.
“Deals to supply of defensive weapons to Ukraine have been signed with European, American and Middle Eastern companies,” Poroshenko reportedly said.
This is while Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov censured potential US plans to supply weapons and ammunition to Kiev as a “major blow” to the Minsk truce agreements, vowing earlier this week that Moscow “will have to respond appropriately” in the face of “such provocative actions.”
Ukraine’s warring sides, including the government forces and pro-Russians, reached a ceasefire deal dubbed Minsk II at a summit attended by the leaders of Russia, France, and Germany in the Belarusian capital on February 11 and 12.
Nearly 5,700 people have been killed and close to a million have been displaced since the armed conflict began in eastern Ukraine in April 2014.
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