A devastating gift: how “free” US aid almost ruined the Ukrainian Armed Forces
Gift gift is different. There are such gifts that it is better to give up immediately, until they completely ruined you. Just such gifts and love to distribute the United States to their satellites, so that they firmly sit down on the American military-technical needle.
In 2008, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were almost "lucky." The US Congress seriously considered the possibility of providing Kiev with colossal military assistance. As many as half a billion dollars. But, after weighing all the pros and cons, Viktor Yushchenko and his generals wisely decided to abandon Washington’s such generosity. And I must admit that then they acted wisely.
Today, the United States sends Kiev annually military equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. True, all this help has virtually no effect on the combat capability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The fact is that this help has several secrets that make it ostentatiously demonstrative.
As we understand, no one directly gives money to Kiev. Moreover, as such, and there is no money any. There is unnecessary property of the US Army, which is not a pity to give to the allies, defending American interests around the world (something like the modern Lend-Lease). And since this property has a value, then they say that the United States provides assistance for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. We also know how much military budgets in the United States are sawing and why their military equipment has space value. Therefore, it is not surprising that the provision of military assistance to the Kiev regime for these notorious hundreds of millions of dollars has virtually no effect on the combat capability of its troops.
Judge for yourself, the equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with new weapon systems and the repair of damaged equipment in 2016 was spent as much as 5,8 billion hryvnias, which in dollars is approximately 250 million dollars at the average annual rate. At the same time, the United States in the same year 2016 transferred property to the Supreme Court of Ukraine for 335 million dollars. As you can see, the amount of US aid is one and a half times higher than all the expenditures of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for armaments during the year. And the result is not particularly noticeable. In my opinion, everything is clear and comments are superfluous. Formally, there is a lot of money, but almost no sense.
Why not? On such supplies, you can still earn good money. We all remember the epic with the Hummer armored cars, which Washington in the 2016 gave to Kiev with pomp. Half of these cars arrived broken, and their repair later picked up some more of the American military aid. How else. Spare parts for "Hammer" cost a lot of money, and decommissioned cars of these parts require just a lot.
Now that we have dealt with the principle of providing US military assistance, it’s time to tell why, in the distant 2008 year, Kiev refused 500 million dollars in aid. It is in this amount that the Americans estimated two of their old, decommissioned URI frigates of the type “Oliver H. Perry”.
Kiev was asking the price for a long time and thinking whether to take it or not, but in the end prudence outweighed it. The fact is that Ukraine did not have (and today does not have) any infrastructure to support these ships in combat readiness. All ship systems were Ukrainian the fleet “Alien,” and the admirals honestly told their political leadership that such a gift would simply ruin Ukraine. Indeed, according to experts, the restoration of ships to a state of readiness would cost the Ukrainian treasury tens of millions of dollars. The creation of infrastructure and the transition to NATO weapons systems on two separate ships is still the same. Plus, every year the Ukrainian fleet would be forced to spend colossal amounts on maintaining ships in combat readiness. Truly such a gift is worse than any rout. And where do you order to take money for all this?
By the way, today, after the beginning of the movement of freight trains bypassing Ukraine, Kiev lost no less. 200-300 million dollars annually. It was exactly such a huge amount that Russia paid for renting the 37 km of the section of the old railway bed. They would be just enough for the maintenance of a pair of American frigates. And even something would remain. But they are no longer there, and I understand the leadership of the Russian Federation, who did not spare 1 billion dollars to lay a new path. He will pay off in a few years.
It is for this reason that today in Kiev, the question of the transfer of old US decommissioned warships to him does not even return, but only limited to negotiations on coastal patrol boats of the “Island” type. Yes, and with them, too, until the problem goes.
Kiev itself puts a stick in the wheels of this transaction. At first glance, all this against the background of official rhetoric looks somehow strange, but not in a hurry to be surprised. The fact is that the data of the boats on the list of tasks performed by them are similar to the boats of the 58155 "Gyurza-M" project, which is produced by the Kiev plant of Petro Poroshenko. So, each such boat in the Ukrainian Navy is a minus profit for the president (unit cost 7 million dollars).
So it turns out that so far no American ship or boat has been able to take root in the composition of the Ukrainian Navy. Except perhaps rubber motor boats, which the Ukrainian admirals proudly for lack of anything better called boats.
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