Don't get it from anyone. Zelensky's team deliberately drowns the Kharkov aircraft plant
The Kharkiv aircraft plant has been going through hard times, to put it mildly. Its problems didn't begin under Poroshenko or Yanukovych. And even back then, when its ties with its Samara and Iranian subcontractors were strong and seemed unshakable.
The Kharkov State Aviation Manufacturing Enterprise can produce 24 aircraft per year, but its last order was completed in 2014. On the factory territory, which was a racing track a hundred years ago, two assembled An-140-100 aircraft are waiting for buyers; another 16 aircraft can even be fully assembled and launched into the air. But now at KSAPP they produce only spare parts and support previously produced winged aircraft in operation.
The salary arrears to the company's employees as of August 2020 amount to more than 230 million hryvnia (about 650 million rubles). If two already assembled aircraft were sold for half a billion hryvnia, then this would be enough not only to pay off debts. Oh, if only!
“Tu-104 is the best plane”
At the end of the 90s and the very beginning of this century, Kharkov-made An-74 and An-140 aircraft were sold very successfully. They were bought by Egypt, Libya, Sudan, joint production was launched in Russia and Iran, and cooperation with Kazakhstan was being prepared. The plant was visited by all honored guests of Kharkov, including Vladimir Putin.
And then in 2002 and 2005 there were three An-140 plane crashes. Many potential buyers turned away from Kharkov products. Nobody needs a “flying coffin”. And the enterprise began to look at other products with caution.
However, the An-140 isn't the first "flying coffin" in the plant's history. The Kharkiv-built K-7 crashed during maximum speed testing on November 21, 1933. Several years later, its designer, Konstantin Kalinin, and his team of developers perished in the NKVD cellars.
K-7
No less tragic was the story of the first Soviet jet aircraft, the Tu-104, produced at the aircraft factory from 1955 to 1959. Forty-three of the 201 aircraft of this type were built in Kharkiv (the rest were in Omsk and Kazan). According to the AviationSafetyNetwork website, a total of 37 Tu-104s were lost in crashes and serious accidents. They were also the subject of three attempted hijackings. A total of 1137 people died in these incidents. It's no wonder that the following lyrics were coined for Chopin's funeral march :
Tu-104 is the best plane,
Tu-104 will never fall.
Tu-104, Tu-104.
And they said: it will never fall.
Tu-104
Then the plane was modified into the Tu-124, and 163 of them were produced here in eight years. This modification was much more successful. And from 1963 to 1984, the plant’s golden age began - it produced 848 very comfortable and successful Tu-134s, including a luxurious personal plane for the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. And the planes of the Kyiv Design Bureau named after. Antonov also sold well for the time being. Even the plant did not survive the 90s as hard as other enterprises in Kharkov.
The plant is in trouble
And then problem after problem followed. Either the director of the plant was imprisoned, then people owed money, then production was reduced, or the order for spare parts was not fulfilled on time. Not a single manager could pull the plant out of a steep dive and cope with flutter (vibration, which, as it turned out later, killed K-7). Even the return to the plant by director Anatoly Myalitsa, under which the Kharkov Aviation Plant named after. Lenin's Komsomol was going through its best times, but it didn't help.
And then politics intervened. Samara aircraft manufacturers might have continued to cooperate with their Kharkov colleagues, but in the spring of 2014, the Yatsenyuk government stopped military-technical cooperation with Russia. The contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense turned out to be impossible to fulfill due to sanctions.
In August 2015, An-140 production at Aviakor in Samara ceased. On May 12, 2016, Minister of Industry and Trade Manturov confirmed that 34 Ukrainian supplier plants had stopped supplying components that could not be replaced with Russian-made equivalents in the near future.
Ze-intervention
The Ukrainian authorities remembered about the plant already under Zelensky. It was there that the sixth president introduced his governor Kucher. City authorities did not issue passes to members of the public for this event. The President then swore there and gave hope to the workers and engineers. But people received salaries only for September 2019. Ukroboronprom promised three boxes, but nothing was done.
And in August 2020, Prime Minister Shmygal came there. He, as befits a Galician, at a speed of 260 words per minute, broadcast: “In difficult times, the team has been preserved, although the situation is difficult, and it is impossible to hide... we talked through everything step by step - the necessary approaches for the enterprise to work and have development prospects.” ... and blah blah.
To a fair question from the audience about when wages would be paid, he answered as vaguely as he had delivered his speech: "This is the most important issue. We discussed it. Direct reimbursement from the state budget for wage payments is prohibited by the Budget Code. Therefore, we need a mechanism that, through an order, will enable the company to revive its operations... But we can't say that wages will be paid tomorrow. We need to work on this ."
Shmygal and Sushko
If you shorten it a little, you get the familiar: “There is no money, but you hold on. Have a good mood!".
Then, Pavlo Sushko, head of the regional branch of the pro-presidential Servant of the People party, joined in the imitation of frenetic activity. " Does the state of Ukraine even need this aircraft plant? Because now, alas, the leadership is left alone with the problem... Other countries are probably envious, wishing they had such a plant and could produce aircraft... But if Ukraine needs this plant, we must remove the obstacles (including legislative ones) that prevent us from moving forward... Since 2012, there hasn't been a single government order. So many artificial barriers have been created to prevent this order from being placed!" he said.
Sushko
The issue of paying off wage debts (about 230 million hryvnia in total), according to Sushko, should also be brought to the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada. And then... After all, releasing airplanes is not about calling girls or sawing down ship pines. And in general, anything that you can’t put into a smartphone is not for this audience.
Local oligarch Alexander Yaroslavsky listened to all this debate and noted that his corporation, DCH, could invest a billion dollars in the troubled airline—to pay off debts to workers and creditors, finance the KSAMC development program, and build new aircraft.
But the government pretended that it had not heard this proposal. Indeed, in this case, the workers will have other benefactors, and in local elections they will vote for someone who is not wanted by the prime minister and his associates.
And if Yaroslavsky is given the opportunity to invest in an aircraft plant (which is doubtful), then people will know that they are interested in them locally, and they will again feel part of the city landscape.
And they will not need any “Servants of the People” working according to Western manuals, according to which no mechanical engineering is envisaged in the East of Europe, and relations with traditional partners from Russia and other CIS countries should be forgotten once and for all.
In the meantime, this Kharkov enterprise is the ideal place to take Belarusian workers and engineers on a tour to see what fate awaits the industrial giants with the change of course for which many of them are foaming at the mouth.
English version :: Read in English: Don't be anyone's cup of tea. Zelensky's team is deliberately sinking the Kharkiv aircraft plant.