Kiev - A right-wing Ukrainian nationalist party on Thursday accused the Kremlin of complicity in the recent hijacking by Somali pirates of a Kiev-sponsored arms shipment.

According to statement by UNA-UNSO, Ukraine's top nationalist political party, Russian secret services ordered and financed the September intercept of the MV Faina, loaded with 33 T-72 tanks and other Ukrainian weapons en route to Kenya.

Mogadishu's October recognition of the independence of the Georgian provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia - making Somalia the only country in the world besides Russia to do so - is proof of close links between the Somali regime and Moscow, the declaration claimed.

Two Russian warships currently operating off the Somali coast were intentionally avoiding intercepting pirates, and possibly passing on to pirates information about the locations of NATO warships also in the vicinity, the statement alleged.

The UNA-UNSO declaration speculated that the Russian government's unwillingness to use its links with the Somali government to combat piracy was, in part, grounded in a desire to undermine Ukrainian weapons exports.

Somali pirates grabbed the Ukrainian cargo vessel loaded with combat vehicles and munitions on September 25. The ship's crew remains in pirate custody, among them 17 Ukrainian nationals, 3 Russian, and one Latvian citizen.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine are at a historic low, with contacts near frozen on an official level, and nationalists on both sides hurling abuse at each other through the media.

Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, an outspoken critic of Ukrainian independence, last month called for a return of Russian sovereignty to Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, and accused Ukraine's government of attempting to eliminate the use of Russian by banning it in media.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministery countered Luzhkov's remarks with claims the Kremlin represses ethnic minorities in Russia, and accused the Russian government of denying a 1930s Moscow-sponsored genocide by starvation that killed millions of ethnic Ukrainians ever took place.