The increased supply of weapons to Ukraine should spur the country to an active military policy and indicate that NATO is ready to fight to the last Ukrainian, military historian Boris Yulin believes. In a conversation with Lenta.ru, he assessed the impact of such assistance from the West on the situation around the LPR and DPR. According to the expert, Ukraine will not become militarily superpowerful, but it will have enough strength to seize a forceful solution to the conflict in Donbass.
In January alone, Ukraine received a $200 million supply of weapons from the United States. It included Javelin and other anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers, firearms, ammunition. The total amount of deliveries over the past three months amounted to $1.5 billion. Regular deliveries also come from the UK, and Poland has announced its intention to send several tens of thousands of artillery shells, mortars and grenade launchers to the country.
“Until the last Ukrainian”
“In fact, relatively few weapons have accumulated in Ukraine. Deliveries, indeed, are constantly going on, especially in the last month, but not large in volume. Heavy weapons, tanks, self-propelled guns, armored personnel carriers, warships, airplanes, helicopters are not supplied. We are talking about anti-tank military systems, however, the latest model, Javelin portable missile systems, ”said Yulin.
Also, according to him, it is planned to supply air defense systems, the latest systems that the Ukrainians are asking for from the States. Formally, all these types of weapons are not offensive, but the military expert considers such a division to be very doubtful.
We are not talking about Ukraine becoming a superpowerful military power. Rather, that NATO is ready to fight to the last Ukrainian
Boris Yulin Military historian
“It is rather difficult to assess how serious weapons are supplied to the country. Anti-tank systems, for example, are not defensive, but simply weapons, a means of combating armored vehicles. The division into “defensive” and “offensive” types is still very crafty, having little to do with real life. By and large, it is needed simply to show that Ukraine is not going to attack. Only these Javelins alone are very lethal weapons, ”Yulin emphasized.
With the available reserves, as he noted, Ukraine can seize the Donbass long ago, having not only superiority in arms, but also in numbers.
“There are over 100 thousand people in the region, and this group is well armed with Soviet weapons. There are practically no heavy modern weapons in the Donbass, and Russia, in accordance with the Minsk agreements, does not have the right to supply them,” the historian said.
Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that over the past three months, the country has received from the West more than a thousand tons of weapons and ammunition worth $1.5 billion. This amount of assistance, he noted, is not the limit, Kiev will continue to receive weapons and equipment.
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