To get first-hand information on the affairs of Ukraine’s scandal-hit rocket plant Pivdenmash, it appears that all one has to do is call up its director and pretend to be the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov.
That’s what pro-Kremlin Russian pranksters Vladimir “Vovan” Kuznetsov and Alexei “Lexus” Stolyarov did, and the two posted a recording of the call on the video-sharing site YouTube on Aug. 16.
Kuznetsov, pretending to be Turchynov, but speaking in Russian and not even attempting to put on a Ukrainian accent in Russian, called up Sergii Voyt, the CEO of Pivdenmash (often referred to by its name in Russian, Yuzhmash) and put several questions to the plant manager.
Pivdenmash is the Ukrainian missile plant that a New York Times article published on Aug. 14 accused of being a possible source of rocket engines that have boosted North Korea’s missile program.
In the article, entitled “North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say,” missile expert Michael Elleman and sources in U.S. intelligence agencies are quoted as saying that the rocket engines “likely” came from Pivdenmash.
However, the article’s authors neither provided any strong evidence nor got a comment from the Ukrainian plant.
And while the journalists from the U.S. newspaper didn’t manage to contact Pivdenmash’s Voyt for a comment on the scandalous story, the pro-Kremlin pranksters did.
Voyt appears to have had no doubt he was speaking to Turchynov, answering all of the questions Kuznetsov asked.
During the prank call, Voyt said Pivdenmash had nothing to do with the North Korean missile program. Instead, he speculated that it could have been Russia or China that had provided rocket engine secrets to North Korea.
“I can’t imagine how (the secrets) could have got (to North Korea). It could happen through our neighbor (Russia),” Voyt said, adding that Russia had access to Pivdenmash developments.
Pivdenmash CEO Sergii Voyt (C) talks to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (R) on Oct. 21, 2014, at Pivdenmash, a 73-year-old plant in the city of Dnipro, 500 kilometers south of Kyiv.
He said the Ukrainian plant has few partners and “has just started to cooperate with South Korea – small stuff,” while the design bureau of Pivdenmash, the Yuzhnoye Design Office, has worked with South Korea, for 14 years; and China for 20 years.
Voyt said the Yuzhnoye Design Office employs many people who travel to China to help the country develop rocket engines.
“So there may be a weak link,” he said. “We must work with them, so that they… jabber less.”
Anyway, he said, “our design bureau couldn’t give anything away; maybe something leaked through China.”
“These are just my assumptions, though,” Voyt said in the call.
Pivdenmash issued a press release confirming that the conversation was real but saying that “nothing sensational or scandalous was said” in the call.
The plant management accused the Russian pranksters of trying to make it look like Voyt was talking about North Korea, while he actually mentioned the missile plant’s cooperation with South Korea.
Turchynov commented on the prank on his Facebook page on Aug. 16 evening, saying this had been yet another provocation by Russian special services to undermine the reputation of the Ukraine’s rocket-building enterprise.
“Regarding its CEO Voyt – I’d rather he next time, discussing the public issues, used the means of national special communication tools that can’t be accessed by Russian provocateurs,” Turchynov said.
However, the comment was deleted after about five minutes.
Read the full story about the Ukraine-North Korea missile scandal here. Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].
