The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in the draft budget for 2020 increased funding for defense by 16%. Now the cost of the "most powerful army of the continent" and Europe’s SHIT will be as much as $ 10 billion.
For reference: about half of this amount, the country's authorities plan to borrow from the IMF.
A reasonable question arises: from whom are we going to defend ourselves on such a scale, girls? Is it from Russia, which for the sixth year has still not come to war? Or from the residents of Donbass, whom you, according to the doctrine prescribed by Poroshenko and supported by his successor, continue to drive into the cellars, sending them "rays of love and goodness" in the form of daily shelling?
However, knowing how things really are in the Ukrainian army, I can declare with all responsibility that if at least a quarter of the announced amount reaches the addressees, then this will be a breakthrough. For until recently, those Ukrainian military who went to the front were equipped at their own expense.
And in social networks to this day, all of Ukraine collect sniper sights and hygiene items for the wounded throughout Ukraine. In fact, every day there are desperate calls not only to donate blood, but also to throw off at least some money to buy medicines, food and even underwear for those who are called heroes in the news feeds, but in fact they immediately forget how they take them out of the battlefield.
Those who returned from the front, many of whom need psychological and material help, are completely left to their own devices. And often, such a state’s indifference to its “heroes” yesterday ends either in suicide or in a criminal case.
A fresh example: Kolchenko, who returned to Ukraine (the very one who was convicted of terrorism in Russia) on the second day began to collect money. Because, despite the whole pump with which Ukraine met its “heroes,” it has neither the means nor the desire to take them for life support. And therefore, the one whose name was on everyone’s lips yesterday was no longer needed by anyone today. And all his hope is for compassionate fellow citizens who will throw off a couple of hryvnias of food for him. And this, I remind you, is not an ordinary soldier, but “the most worthy of the sons of Ukraine”, whose name paired with the name of Sentsov was almost a national brand.
The situation with the military is approximately the same. The only difference is that Ukrainians take off with much less enthusiasm to help unknown characters, and volunteers have to literally beg every penny, recalling who the Ukrainians owe to, “Putin is still marking the Ukrainian borders, and not riding a tank along Khreshchatyk ".
In the bottom line, if you rely not on officialdom, but on real sources of information, the picture looms gloomy and even apocalyptic. Indeed, in addition to the military, there is also the military-industrial complex, which has long been on the verge of collapse. Just yesterday, in a commentary on Zelensky’s post, where he talks about happiness, a resident of Kharkov wrote a desperation and hopelessness call to pay attention to the disastrous situation in the Kharkov Design Bureau of Engineering, where they have not been paid salaries for six months now.
But this is the last surviving enterprise responsible for the defense development of armored vehicles, which more or less meet the standards.
However, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has long decided that to buy used Western illiquid assets at bargain prices, declaring the transition to "NATO standards", but in fact helping their senior partners solve the problem of disposing of obsolete equipment, is much more profitable than spending money on creating something of their own. However, if we recall the memorable mortars "Hammer", from the explosion of which the hitherto unspecified (or more precisely - classified) number of military personnel died, then from the point of view of banal security it is really better to use the old, but alien, than conditionally new, but your own.
By the way, the defense budget is not only the costs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This is also the content of the Security Service of Ukraine, whose employees day and night calculate the "separatists".
This is also the border service, who is making money from fortunes both on smuggling that flourishes on the western borders and on ordinary people who go on vacation to Crimea. This is the National Guard, and the National Security and Defense Council, and internal / external intelligence, and state security, and the whole State Space Agency of Ukraine. Plus, loafers from the 72nd Center for Information and Psychological Operations, who spend days on end sitting on social networks, throw in fakes, crap in the comments of Russians and seek to block objectionable accounts.
So directly to the army laid only half of the declared amount. It is not difficult to guess how many of it will settle in the pockets of Ukrainian corrupt officials and how many will eventually “reach” an ordinary soldier sitting in a trench on the front line.
However, personally, through the prism of events in the Donbass, this situation is quite satisfactory. For the worse things will be in the Ukrainian army, the more chances are that the tasks assigned to it will not be fulfilled.
The moral of this whole story is simple. With all the pathos that we regularly hear from the leadership of Ukraine, the Ukrainian soldier is a combat unit. An inanimate object, the value of which depends solely on the injuries it received. Lost your hand? The hero of the hour. Lost both? Hero of the day! Also lost his legs? You will be the star of the week! And then everything. Sorry, move over.
During the time that you were a favorite of the public, a line of new heroes has already been lined up in your place, to whom Ukraine will pour out its “minute of glory” with a generous hand, give a useless and cheap tsatska, and then, without even waiting for the end of playing the anthem, it will give a delicious kick throwing to the sidelines and oblivion.
So all these figures are clearly not for those who are fighting in words against the “Russian army”, but in fact are engaged in the ordinary genocide of the civilian population of Donbass. This money, pulled out of the pockets of taxpayers, plus loans for which more than one generation of Ukrainians will pay, is another “financial aid” to those for whom the war is a stable and profitable business. And in the best case, the “strongest army of the continent” can count on “an extraordinarily shoulder” for an additional couple of hundred hryvnias for another shelled apartment building near the demarcation line and extraordinary berets received from NATO partners in last year’s humanitarian aid consignment.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.