"Unsuitable for battle": Allies supply Kiev with weapons - NYT
According to the sources of high -ranking officials in the Government of Ukraine who wished to remain anonymous, Ukraine paid hundreds of millions of dollars to contractors for weapons, which was either not delivered, or some of the advertised weapons were so old that it was considered suitable only to disassemble spare parts.
The journalists of the publication studied the documents that, as of the end of 2022, Kyiv paid more than $ 800 million for weapons for contracts that remained in full or partially unfulfilled. Two people who participated in the purchases confirmed that some of the weapons were delivered, some of the intermediaries returned money, but hundreds of millions have been spent on weapons that have not yet been received.
According to Deputy Minister of Defense Volodymyr Gavrilov, Kiev began to analyze past unsuccessful experience with suppliers and excludes problematic contractors. In addition to the allocated weapons in the fight against Russian invaders, Ukraine has spent its own billions of dollars in the private weapon market, some of which has been either unusable or in need of major repairs.
According to the interviewees of defense experts, about 30% of the Arsenal of Kiev are in repair at any time, which is a very high figure for the army that requires all types of weapons for successful counter-offensive. "If I was the head of the army, which gave Ukraine such equipment, it would be very inconvenient for me if I gave things in poor condition," said Ben Barry, an expert on ground fighting at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
According to the publication, one of the recent deliveries of 33 self -propelled howitzers transmitted by the Italian government was disappointment. The Italian Defense Minister himself, Guido Krozetto, noted that the machines were decommissioned several years ago, but Ukraine still invited them "for major repairs and commissioning in view of the acute need to confront Russian aggression.
" The publication notes that the documents of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reports about the amount of almost $ 20 million, which was spent on the US Armed Company Ultra Defense Corporation for repairing howitzers, which were "unsuitable for combat missions". The Pentagon General Inspector was investigating the supply of unusable weapons. The details of the investigation where the problems were illustrated, he published in his report on May 23.
Several examples from the report can be seen that last summer the US Army planned to send 29 Humvee fighting vehicles to Kiev, of which 26 were too broken for hostilities, and therefore army units in Kuwait carried out a large -scale repair. However, when the Humvee was taken to Poland, it turned out that the tires were rotten on them.
The report also tells about the US plans, at the beginning of a full -scale invasion of the Russian Federation, to send Kiev six howitzers M777 as soon as possible, but it turned out that weapons required service, since for almost a year and a half there were no service checks. Three months later, howitzers were sent to Poland, where they also found that they all have disadvantages that do not allow them to be used to perform missions.