KGB Reveals Illegal Sales of MIG-29s, Tanks Abroad

A rogue business enterprise covertly sold to foreigners two high-tech items from the Soviet military arsenal, MIG-29 jet fighters and T-72 tanks, in “dirty and shameful” deals, according to the KGB, the state security agency.

The latest chapter in arms sale scandals in the East Bloc was revealed in the agency’s monthly publication, “KGB U.S.S.R.”

The report is the first to link Soviet nationals to weapons transactions that once would have earned them severe prison terms or even the death penalty. Opponents of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policies say that such deals are possible only because of the relaxation of government controls on the economy.

Although the KGB report gave few details of the deals, the affair reflects the striking changes in the Soviet Union in recent years: first, that the secret export of modern weapons as huge as tanks and warplanes, presumably undetected at first by the KGB, was possible in this erstwhile police state--and then that the very agency whose job it is to protect state secrets should publicize it in a tacit admission of failure.

Similar change has swept over Moscow’s former allies in Eastern Europe.

On Sunday, the Washington Post had reported that one of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact allies, Romania, served for 10 years as a conduit of advanced military technology to the U.S. government in exchange for more than $40 million in pay-offs.

And on Wednesday, Hungary’s defense minister conceded that his country had sold Soviet-built warplanes to the United States, but said they were outdated MIG-21s without any intelligence value.

Among the culprits in the Soviet transaction, the KGB singled out a cooperative enterprise set up by the Ministry of the Aircraft Industry, purportedly to sell scrap metal aboard.

Known by its Russian-language initials ANT, the enterprise became infamous in February when KGB agents swooped down on a train at the Black Sea port of Novorossisk and impounded 12 T-72 tanks and crates of submachine guns that ANT was planning to export to the West for $8 million in profit.

Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, whose role in the workings of ANT some have questioned, called the abortive tank sale “the most disgraceful page in the economic history of our country.” But the KGB monthly publication, offered to general readers for the first time, said there was worse--deals that were not thwarted.

“Experienced investigators and court organs still haven’t gotten to the end of this dirty and shameful story,” it said. “Wholesale and retail, without a twinge of conscience, MIG-29 fighters and T-72 tanks were sold by ANT and other concerns.”

By all accounts, the temptation to sell the planes to willing buyers must have been enormous.

In an interview earlier this year, the minister of aircraft industry, Apollon S. Sysoyev, denied that MIG-29s were sold to the West by ANT, although he said buyers were ready to pay $20 million each for the planes.

The double-engine multi-role fighter and attack aircraft, nicknamed “Fulcrum” by NATO, has been operational only since 1985, and is comparable in size to the U.S. FA-18 Hornet. It is considered one of the Soviet Union’s top military aircraft.

“After our newest MIG-29 fighter was demonstrated in Farnborough (an air show held in Britain every two years), a number of Western companies contacted ANT with proposals to buy hundreds of these planes,” Sysoyev told Izvestia, the government newspaper. “Let me assure you that selling our newest fighters in small consignments poses no threat to national security. We have already sold some 200 planes of this type to non-NATO countries.”

Sysoyev said the Soviet air force already has a better aircraft, probably meaning the Sukhoi 27, and for that reason his ministry decided it was possible to begin widening exports of the MIGs. But “the question was discussed by the Politburo, and the decision was negative,” he said.

Nevertheless, Sysoyev said, believing the sale of a MIG-29 would fetch as much foreign exchange for the strapped economy as 200,000 tons of coal, he instructed the president of ANT, V.I. Ryashentsev, to continue the hunt for foreign buyers.

The KGB publication, which supposedly contained previously classified documents, did not say where the planes or tanks were sent or how, or who their purchasers were.

The tanks seized at Novorossisk, however, were supposed to be sent by ship to France, the publication revealed. In production, with some modifications, since the late 1970s, the T-72 is one of the Soviet Union’s main battle tanks.

The Washington Post, in its report on the Romania transactions, quoted Jane’s Defense Weekly, a widely respected London-based publication that specializes in armament and defense matters, as saying that the U.S. military acquired a T-72 in 1987.

Henry Dodds, editor of Jane’s Soviet Intelligence Review, a related publication that specializes in Soviet security and defense matters, said Thursday in a telephone interview from London that no MIG-29s are now known to be in Western hands. However, he said that about six months ago, an unidentified intermediary in Britain was offered the option of buying a two-seat trainer version plus four regular one-seaters but failed to find a buyer.

The degree of high-level, official involvement in ANT, which was reportedly granted the right to export without the customary export licenses, is now one of the most passionately debated issues in Soviet politics.

The affair is viewed alternatively as another example of abuse of power or proof that cooperatives and other changes in the economy sought by Gorbachev lead to such money hunger that people are ready to sell out their homeland if the payoff is big enough.

Pravda, the Communist Party daily, said that ANT, which was supposed to import scarce consumer goods with the hard currency obtained from its exports, had top-level access to the Soviet government. Ryzhkov, confronted in March by a lawmaker who said the prime minister’s signature was on ANT’s export license, threatened to resign over allegations that he was involved, angrily declaring, “The government can make mistakes, but it is not corrupt.”

But Ryzhkov, customarily unflappable, made a cryptic remark that seemed to say Gorbachev knew more than he was telling about the ANT affair.

“I don’t understand you, either, Mikhail Sergeyevich,” he told the president, who was chairing the session of the Congress of People’s Deputies. “Why don’t you provide information?”

SOVIET WEAPONS SOLD TO THE WEST MIG-29 FIGHTER Operational since early 1985, the MiG-29 is a twin-engined combat aircraft comparable in size to the U.S. F/A-18 Hornet. Crew: 1 Wing Span: 37 ft. 3 1/4 in. Length: 56 ft. 10 in. Height overall: 15 ft. 6 1/4 in. Maximum level speed: Mach 2.3 (1,529 mph) Armament: Six medium-range radar homing and/or air-to-air missiles under each wing. Able to carry bombs and 57 mm, 80 mm and 240 mm rockets in attack role; also one 30 mm gun.

T-72 TANK Crew: 3 Armament: One 125 mm gun; one 7.62 mm PKT machine-gun co-axial with main armament; one 12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine-gun. Dimensions: Length (including armament) 29 ft. 7 in.; length (hull) 21 ft.; width 11 ft. 1 in.; height (commander’s cupola) 7 ft. 5 in. Weight: Combat 90,405 lbs. Engine: 780hp diesel. Performance: Road speed 50 mph; range 310 miles. History: Entered service with Soviet Army in 1972 and also in service with East Germany and Syria.

Source: Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft and Modem Tanks & Fighting Vehicles