Since the beginning of the all-out war, the Ukrainian military scooped up more than 800 units of Russia’s heavy equipment including some 300 tanks, a Ukrainian colonel says.
Ukrainian military Colonel Oleksandr Saruba told DW that the Ukrainian forces are now using a lot of Russian armaments and equipment seized earlier in the course of the full-scale war in their ongoing counter-offensive. Most of the captured equipment was abandoned by Russians during previous Ukrainian offensive operations.
“Russia is competing with Western countries to supply weapons to Ukraine,” joked Saruba.
Saruba, who works for the center within the Ukrainian armed forces that investigates the weapons, says that Ukraine now has in its possession more than 800 formerly Russian units of heavy equipment, including artillery systems, tanks, armored personnel carriers, electronic warfare equipment, air defense systems, and a number of various vehicles, including a mobile sauna. The captured small arms are numbering in their thousands.
Among the captured Russian heavy equipment, there currently are around 300 tanks, enough to supply ten tank battalions, according to Saruba.
According to the data by the Oryx visually confirmed losses tracker, in total, Ukrainian troops captured at least 932 pieces of Russian heavy equipment, and at least 141 tank.`
Not only the repairable equipment is useful, but also the destroyed weapons, debris, missile remnants, combat drones, instruction manuals – “everything which allows the Ukrainian forces to study the weapons used by Russia and develop their own tactics and countermeasures. This is one of the tasks of Saruba’s center, in addition to looking at the latest technology Ukraine can use when it comes to weapons development,” DW wrote.
Additionally, experts who study the captured equipment have found that Russia adapts its military production depending on the components it has in stock or what it expects to receive.
I heard about this recently. I’m glad he’s doing more to rehabilitate Ukraine, and to shut out corruption. I’m sure there’s still some legacy of pro-russian bastards in the country even now, like that case with a former city councilman who was arrested. The West needs to know how Ukraine is cleaning itself of the soviet past, and cutting the strings away from putin’s controlling hand. Although I think some people of the West cynically think this is “proof” that Ukraine’s previous corruption is still rampant and too deep to be cleared.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/zelensky-fires-all-military-enlistment-office-chiefs-over-corruption-allegations
The West has more than enough corruption on its own, even if it doesn’t want to admit it.
I indeed think it is a lot more than we admit, but also because often corruption is not recognised as such.
For example, in the Netherlands minister’s (especially of the largest centre-right party) often resign to work for some lobby group or company active in the same domain as the ministry they were responsible for, often for an insane salary.
They use arguments like: “the party is pro-entrepreneurship” or “a lot of our people are businessmen, so of course they will end up at a company, there is nothing wrong about that.”
It is still corruption, as they are being used for their connections to get things done the way the companies demand, for example getting permits fixed.
Because they aren’t paid directly for these kind of services but are just employees with a fixed salary, it is not illegal and not corruption.
But I think in Ukraine people will call it corruption, which I think it is.
Take Schröder as an example, he works for Gazprom only for his connections within the government.
In the West we have such a narrow definition of corruption that we are pretending to be less corrupt than we actually are.
But when the same happens in Ukraine, it suddenly is corruption.
I think the government and businesses should be carefully separated and I think there should be a cool off period to work in the same sector.
When you dedicate your life to public service, you should accept you aren’t getting rich because of it. If you want to get rich, you should become a businessman, not a politician.
The West’s holier-than-thou attitude is a major reason why so many countries in this world hate us, Bert. They know damned well who we truly are, but we pretend to be better. For instance, we enjoy bitching about Brazil, et al, for destroying their rain forests – rightly so – yet we destroy thousands of acres of land in our countries EVERY DAY. We gladly buy lithium for our “environmentally healthy” electric cars from countries that use child labor and who are destroying their environment to mine the stuff. And so on, and so forth…
That sounds more like cronyism to me, but it’s still corrupt. An example of how the “connections” a person knows, might be used to collect unfair benefits. It was common in the USSR. In the United States, a similar situation of large pharmaceutical corporations giving “campaign donations” to government FDA officials, then encourages the bureaucrats to rubber stamp things for those corporations. The business working with government, as a self-reinforcing cycle of corruption.
I like your idea of a “cool-off period” to separate government from business. I think it helps to believe in the idea of God holding someone accountable if they give in to temptations of corruption. If a person fears punishment of such sins, and hope for subtle rewards of righteousness, then there’s more incentive towards impartiality.