Ukraine plant sucked into North Korea missile row has fallen on hard times
DNIPRO, Ukraine: The wall around the Yuzhmash rocket factory in east Ukraine is in places overgrown with weeds, a sign of hard times at a plant which a new study says could be the source of engines that power North Korean missiles.
Workers at the plant have had their hours cut and wages are in arrears, but Yuzhmash denies the study’s finding that unhappy employees could have been induced to steal engine technology and sell it to illicit arms dealers who passed it on to Pyongyang.
The study by a former US rocket scientist, published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), concluded that missile engines used by Pyongyang derive from designs linked to only a few former Soviet factories. It based its findings mainly on photographs taken by North Korea.
A Reuters reporter who visited Yuzhmash in the city of Dnipro this week found staff struggling to make ends meet and facilities falling into disrepair. The only visible security cameras and guards around the plant were at the main entrances.
“At the moment we’re working a one-day week,” said Valery Vasiliev, head of the trade union at Yuzhmash.
The average wage is around 160 a month but even that is not always paid on time, he said.
“Now there are some small wage arrears -- a bit more than 40 million hryvnias (US$1.4 million). We’re paying it off bit by bit. There are still debts for May and June,” Vasiliev said.
Yuzhmash used to be part of a state-run conglomerate that built rockets for the Soviet space and defence programmes.
When the Cold War ended, it became a Ukrainian state enterprise. Its workforce shrank but it limped on, producing space rockets, mostly in partnership with the Russian plants it had worked with in the Soviet era.
After Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, and a conflict began between government forces and separatists in east Ukraine, those ties were disrupted.
Yuzhmash General Director Sergei Voit told workers in January that annual revenue had fallen to a quarter of what it was before the conflict.
He listed problems including “worn-out manufacturing capacity, a hugely difficult situation with personnel ... arrears on wages, power bills and debt repayments.” — Reuters