Want to buy a squadron of MiG-23 fighter aircraft or a few hundred amphibious landing craft? If so, then head for the biggest going-out-of-business sale since German unification, which opened Monday at the Soviet Union's Berlin army headquarters.
Billions of dollars worth of military equipment must be sold before all 380,000 Soviet troops withdraw from eastern Germany by 1994."We are selling everything here because it would simply be too expensive and impractical to take it back to the Soviet Union," Lt. Alexander Podokov, one of the Soviet officers supervising the sale, told United Press International.
Aircraft and helicopters available for purchase include elderly MiG-21s, MiG-23s and Mi-8 helicopters.
"The aircraft are being sold without their engines and are only for collectors or museums," Podokov said. "We had somebody this morning who wanted to buy a MiG-21 to put on the roof of his restaurant."