Parliament in Russia has voted to stop using the Soviet-built military radars in Ukraine because of Kyiv's bid to join NATO.

Simultaneously legislator extended another deal that calls on Ukraine to help maintain Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles - a move reflecting strong military industrial ties between the two ex-Soviet neighbors.

The State Soviet voted 388-58 with one abstention to scrap the 1997 agreement with Ukraine which allowed Russia to use data from the radars located near the western town of Mukachevo and the port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. The tremendous facilities were part of the Soviet system of early warning radars intended to spot missile launches.

A deputyProtection Minister Nikolai Pankov admitted the Ukrainian leadership's push for NATO membership had prompted the military to reconsider the agreement. "This is our reply to the Ukrainian government's to quickly join NATO," he said.

Pankov also proclaimed legislators that the radars were past their designated lifetime and had become too costly to maintain. He added that the facilities had become increasingly unreliable and couldcreate wrong information on missile launches.

Pankov said Russia had already built a new early warning radar near St. Petersburg and would soon commission another one near the city of Armavir.

NATO membership is a highly controversial issue for Ukraine, where opinion polls show that over half of the country opposes it. A president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, however, has declared joining NATO as a priority for the country.

Ukraine's NATO bid faces strong opposition from the Eastern neighbor of Ukraine, which has been angered by NATO's eastward expansion and deployments close to its borders and argues that the alliance is a Cold War relic that should be replaced by other international security arrangements.