Ukraine seeks joint ventures with Iran in energy, aircraft manufacturing

Ukrainian Ambassador to Tehran Sergei Burdylyak said his country is willing to enter into joint ventures with Iran in energy and aircraft manufacturing, AVA Diplomatic reports.“We are willing to expand bilateral relations, specially in economy,” Burdylyak said in a meeting with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran.

“Ukraine enjoys abundant capacities in energy, shipbuilding, airplane manufacturing, spare parts and machinary. We hope our bilateral cooperation will expand to these arenas as well,” he added. During the meeting, Zarif referred to a recent meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, and expressed the hope that bilateral relations would broaden in the economic, trade and cultural fields.

Iran has been seeking to bolster ties with Eastern Europe, specially Ukraine, in all the different industrial, political, economic and cultural spheres in the last few years. After purchasing the production license for the Antonov-140 from Ukraine in 2000, Iran built its first IRAN-140 passenger plane in 2003.

The first IRAN-140 aircraft was introduced by Iran in 2003. Five domestically-manufactured IRAN-140 planes were completed in October 2008 to increase the country’s transportation capacity and upgrade the Iranian passenger fleet. The IRAN-140 is a double-engine turboprop aircraft which can fly almost 1,865 miles before re-fueling and its passenger model seats 52 people.