Press
UKRAINE FEARS OF RUSSIAN RADIO AND TV BROADCASTING CENTER IN TRANSNISTRIA
Kiev. Russia has modernized and keeps its mightiest TV and radio broadcasting center, which is able to deaden Ukraine’s all the frequency range, in strict secrecy and under strengthened protection, Kiev’s weekly “Zerkalo Nedeli” (The Week’s Mirror) writes.
It stresses the fact that these actions by Moscow overstep the frames, envisaged by the mandate of peacekeeping forces and are outside the international inspectorates’ field of vision.
“During the Soviet time the Transnistrian TV and radio center, situated in the Mayak settlement of the Grigoriopol rayon, had a classified denomination “Object 850” and it entered the system of the radio relaying station for super-distant radio communication all over the world and covered all the Western and a part of the Eastern hemisphere. The center was used also for the radio-electronic ranging, for broadcasting TV and radio programs and as a silencer for “inimical voices”. The center is able to deaden Ukraine’s entire frequency range. The scale of this enormous object struck imagination: the area of its radio antenna field reaches 850 hectares!”, the weekly writes.
According to the newspaper’s data, in 2007 the federal state enterprise “The Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network” bought this TV and radio center with the help of financial resources, granted especially for this purpose by the Russian federal budget.
“Many components of the center’s equipment got out of order in many aspects, but Moscow experts carried out the modernization of the object only within two years. As it is said, Russian sealed a number of technical premises of the center, there no access for the local technical personnel to these premises. The object is protected by special units of Russia and the Transnistrian Security Ministry, but the center has no military base status”, the weekly says.
The author of the article recognized that the Ukrainian intelligence service manifests its well-substantiated interest to this object, as well as to the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic itself.
“The PMR has become the main source of organized crime in our corner of Europe. The self-proclaimed Transnistrian authorities, which are completely dependent on Russia’s political will, rule here. Everything is possible here – contraband of any goods, trade in drugs and arms, human trafficking. At the same time, Ukraine is the main transit route and sales market. And on the top of all this – the PMR is a potential hot spot, a complete analogue of South Ossetia on our border. The corrupted bosses of the local clans are allegedly controlled by retired officials of the Russia law and order authorities. The Soviet-time enormous arsenals, which Russia has neglected to remove during 19 years, are situated on Transnistria’s territory. The protection of the storehouses is a pretext for the stationing of the Russian military contingent in the amount of 1.5 thousand. The material value is not big – up-to-date weaponry and ammunition had been removed long ago. As a matter of fact, the main task of the Russian contingent is to keep situation in the enclave under control with the help of the Russian arms and to preserve the base for its influence in this part of the CIS”, the weekly considers.
The article is dedicated to a recent history of the Russian secret services in Ukraine, when five officers of the Russian federal security service were detained in the vicinity of Odessa, when a Ukrainian citizen was handing in data, which contained state secret, to them. The Federal Security Service recognized this fact and confirmed that this special operation was conducted from the territory of the unrecognized enclave, which the entire world community, including Russia and Ukraine, recognize officially as a part of Moldova’s territory.
Though the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the “Eurasia” Russian radio agency pretended to this center and declared repeatedly their interest in it, for which purpose even an auction on its sale was put off, but, nevertheless the object was sold for its starting price in the amount of $3.3 million.
