MOSCOW, June 26. /TASS/. Russia will overcome its dependency on Ukrainian production of gas turbine engines for its surface ships, President of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) Alexey Rakhmanov said today.

"We will have no production dependency for propulsion systems by the middle of the next year," Rakhmanov said.

As he put it, at recent sessions instructions were handed down to design marine diesel engines, which will enable Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation to independently produce the whole series of both gas turbine and diesel propulsions for sea vessels.

Earlier, Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said that Russia might fully replace the components that had been delivered from Ukraine, by 2018-2019. In 2014, Ukrainian-Russian military cooperation was suspended. Given that some components for military equipment had been produced in Ukraine since the Soviet era, once ties were cut between both countries this jeopardized the implementation of some Russian defense industrial programs. In particular, the construction of some warships for the Russian Navy was deferred as a result of the failure to supply Ukrainian gas turbine engines.