Jul 22, 2023
Viktor Fridshon/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
- Ukraine’s allies are shifting focus from donating weapons to repairing what is already there, a report says.
- This shift in strategy reflects the acknowledgement that the war is expected to carry on for some time.
- Ukraine’s counteroffensive has seen many Western-donated vehicles be damaged, and repairing them is crucial.
The West’s focus on supporting Ukraine’s war effort has shifted from donating more weapons to repairing and sustaining what they already have, a report says.
This shift in strategy reflects the acknowledgment that the war is expected to carry on for some time, a Pentagon top acquisition official told Politico. “We’re setting up repair facilities in Europe, we’re translating training and repair manuals, we have to do much more together, so there’s going to be more of a focus on that” by partner nations, the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante told the outlet.
Since Ukraine began its counteroffensive to take back occupied territory from Russia, some of its Western-donated equipment, such as US-made Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard tanks, has been lost or damaged.
Russia’s defense lines have proved harder to penetrate than expected, and Ukrainian forces have found themselves coming up against dense minefields.
But, hundreds of hardy armored vehicles donated by the West have been credited as life-saving by Ukrainian soldiers, who say the vehicles protect them and minimize injuries, per several reports.
If possible to repair, getting those vehicles fixed and back in action is a high priority, per Politico. The Times of London visited a secret repair workshop close to the frontline where they saw evidence of Western-supplied armored vehicles being worked on to return to the battle, including vehicles that had taken a direct hit from a tank but were only lightly damaged.
“To be honest, the soldiers are all surprised at the ability of these vehicles to withstand fire,” Serhii Ivanov, a lieutenant who is overseeing the repair of a British-built Wolfhound armored vehicle.
“They really save lives. After a few battles in one of these, no one wants to go back to the old Soviet BTR or anything like it. By comparison, that’s a coffin, a 100 percent chance of death,” he told The Times.
The US-made mine-resistant armored fighting vehicles have also been hailed by Ukrainian troops as being “almost indestructible.”
A 22-nation working group led by the US, Poland, and the UK is working to keep billions of dollars worth of equipment that is already in Ukraine working, so it can continue with its counteroffensive.
The group coordinates repair facilities and has helped Ukraine set up a supply support effort to help track high-demand spare parts.
Since the beginning of the war, scores of countries have committed to sending billions of dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine. The diversity of the equipment coming from multiple supply lines poses challenges for Kyiv, Politico noted.
Readiness rates of equipment have also been a concern for Ukraine, as it is primarily using either decades-old Russian equipment or weapons that are still relatively new to them.
Some of the equipment sent to Ukraine from its Western allies have arrived in need of repair, and most of the serious repair work needs to be done in places like Poland or Czechia.
Carl Court/Getty Images
By comparison, Russia has much larger stockpiles of equipment that it has been able to continue to draw upon.
Despite challenges, Ukraine’s allies have managed to establish a repair infrastructure over the past year, LaPlante told Politico, and teams on the ground are able to “instantly get that information, and then we find the fix, and we get it working.”
“And I really want to give the credit to the Ukrainians, they’re the ones doing it,” he said. “But we’re making sure that they have everything that they need. And if the parts have to come from a country halfway around the world, we make sure we get it to them. So the sustainment is actually most of the work going on right now.”
“This shift in strategy reflects the acknowledgement that the war is expected to carry on for some time.”
This is bad news. We see no shift in Western policies that would assure a quick end to this war. Crawling, sleeping, resting, stumbling, contemplating, wobbling their way forward, backward, forward, sideways is the strategy we’ve been seeing all along, and it won’t change anytime soon with the clowns currently in charge. There is no determined charge forward to reach a clear goal.
“But, hundreds of hardy armored vehicles donated by the West have been credited as life-saving by Ukrainian soldiers, who say the vehicles protect them and minimize injuries, per several reports.”
That’s very good news. Armored vehicles are armored to protect the crews, and this is what Western equipment does better than the Soviet garbage. Ukrainian lives are important, cockroach lives are not.
I still fear the West are more afraid of russia collapsing, by Ukraine winning this war. Even ME shitholes have these ATACM’s, yet all we get from the WH, is more lame excuses.
This all is so unbelievably stupid. I can’t wait to see what the history books will have to say about this bullshit.
The old fool will be eating ice cream in the afterlife. Someone else will need to clean up all his mess.
“Russia’s defense lines have proved harder to penetrate than expected, and Ukrainian forces have found themselves coming up against dense minefields.”
Harder than who expected, talking heads in the WH? When Ukraine destroyed the orcs in Kharkiv, and Kherson, they had them on the run. Were the West asleep at the wheel? They should have seen the ways things were going, and shipped in tons of missiles to keep the momentum going. The dithering, which still continues to this day, handed the orcs all the time they need to spread millions of mines in the South.
If they want to admit it or not, but these so-called leaders are complicit in the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers who must fight their way through those minefields and other orc defenses, which their dithering made possible.
No doubt about it. Leadership means also taking responsibility for the bad decisions and unfortunately the idiots in the White House keep saying how great they’re doing. Tell that to the thousands of Ukrainians dead, wounded and suffering.