Los Angeles Times: Ukrainian Armed Forces in Poor State
The Los Angeles Times newspaper published an article about the current state of the Ukrainian army, informing its readers that over the past 8 months, the Minister of Defense 3 has been replaced in Ukraine - last week Stepan Poltorak was appointed to this post.
"After gaining independence, the part of the once formidable army that Ukraine got" rotted from above ", - quotes an excerpt from the RIA article "News".
The permanent strength of the Ukrainian army after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 was about 1 a million people. Over twenty years, it has dropped to 100 thousand. But, as analysts say, and these data are too high. According to journalists, when an armed conflict began in the east of the country, the then Minister of Defense of Ukraine Igor Tenyukh said that 6 had thousands of servicemen ready for battle.
In addition, funding for the Ukrainian armed forces has been reduced several times. According to the Defense Ministry, for the 2013 of the year, the army received 1.9 a billion dollars, but only 10% of these funds went for modernization. The last large-scale maneuvers Ukraine held 9 years ago.
Since 1991, the troops have not received a single combat aircraft, in the country's air force there are up to three dozen fighters and a small number of obsolete helicopters, although in the Soviet period it was part of the air force fleet there were about 1.5 thousand aircraft.
The tragedy near Ilovaisk revealed the terrible condition of the armed forces of Ukraine - the soldiers thrown into battle were poorly armed and starved, the newspaper notes.
- http://ria.ru/
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