MOSCOW, March 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will allow Ukrainian military inspectors to carry out an emergency monitoring flight over Russian territory only if Kiev pays a regular fee under existing agreements, the Defense Ministry said Friday.
In line with the Open Skies Treaty, which establishes a regime of unarmed aerial observation flights over the territories of its signatories, a country requesting a monitoring flight must finance the mission.
The new authorities in Kiev requested on Tuesday an emergency monitoring flight over Russian regions bordering with Ukraine for March 17-24, citing fears that Russia could be preparing to invade its neighbor.
On Thursday, however, Kiev notified Moscow that Ukraine cannot fulfill its financial obligations related to the requested flight “due to conditions and timeframe of currency transfers.”
“In other words, we were asked to pay for the Ukrainian flight with the promise of debt payment in the future,” said Sergei Koshelev, chief of the Foreign Military Cooperation Directorate at the Defense Ministry.
Koshelev said such an attitude suggested that some political forces behind the current Ukrainian standoff were not interested in the mission itself, but planned to use the expected refusal as a pretext to accuse Russia again of failure to fulfill its international obligations.
“I’d like to confirm that we are ready to fulfill our obligations under the Open Skies Treaty, but we also expect a similar attitude from those who request [inspection] flights over our territory,” the official said.
“We believe that any attempts to use this issue for political gains are unwarranted,” he said.
Russia has originally agreed to allow the Ukrainian inspection flight in hope that its neighbors “will see with their own eyes that the Russian armed forces are not involved in any kind of military activity along the Ukrainian border threatening he country’s security.”
