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In a construction shed in an industrial suburb of Kiev stands the skeleton of a vast aeroplane. Stretching 85 metres from nose to tail, and 88 metres between wingtips, the Antonov AN-225 Mriya (Ukrainian for "dream") is the world's biggest aircraft, covering more ground than a football pitch. This, the second of the only two Mriyas ever built, will never fly.
Antonov, once a jewel of the Soviet military-industrial complex, was formed in 1946 by a pupil of the legendary Yakovlev, designer of the fighters that helped Russia win the second world war. Its first model, the Antonov AN-2, gave remote towns of the Russian east their first taste of air travel. The first Mriya, star of the 1989 Paris air show, carried the space shuttle Bouran to...