KIEV, July 18 (RIA Novosti) - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has signed an intergovernmental agreement with Russia on the use of a naval aviation training center outside the city of Saki, on the Crimean Peninsula, the presidential press service reports.
The center, known as Nitka, provides naval aviation training facilities such as a launch pad, an aerofinisher, a trampoline, a catapult launching device, steam power installations, a glide-path localizer, a marker beacon, and an optical landing system, the Ukrainian news agency Novosti-Ukraina says.
The Nitka center was built back in the Soviet era for aircraft pilots to practice their skills in taking off from and landing on a carrier's deck. It is the only site of its kind in the former USSR.
