OREANDA-NEWS. April 16, 2013. Ukraine will further production of An-70 military transport plane even without participation of Russia.

This was announced by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov during an international roundtable “Interparty cooperation in the CIS framework”.

“We have agreed about resuming of cooperation in An-70 project and started work. Nowadays certain Russian officials declare that they want to produce a military-transport plane themselves. In this case Ukraine will have to continue activities, to bear the costs but we will create this plane. Flight testings are underway now. It is the final stage of production of this plane,” he emphasized.

Mykola Azarov stressed Ukraine will have been able to launch a serial production of An-70.

The Premier reminded that Ukraine and the RF had been jointly producing this plane with unique tactical and technical characteristics and there were not similar to them till present. It is capable to transport up to 50 tons of loads, to land on shortened soil runways etc.

“We were jointly elaborating An-70. It is a perfect aircraft. Neither Americans nor Europeans could have created similar aircrafts,” Mykola Azarov emphasized.