The launch of a Western coalition on armored vehicles can speed up the implementation of joint plans between Ukraine and the West, said the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Daniil Getmantsev.

“Since the times of the USSR, Russia has owned huge reserves of armored vehicles, which means we need to ensure the strengthening of this component... The launch of such a platform as a “coalition of armored vehicles” can speed up the implementation of our common plans with our allies,” Getmantsev wrote on his page in Telegram.

Thus, he assessed the beginning of the work of the “coalition of armored vehicles” of the West in support of Kyiv, as reported by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine on its official website on March 26. According to the department, on this day the first meeting of representatives of the countries participating in the coalition took place in Warsaw. The initiative to create an alliance was proposed by Poland and Germany, and the idea was supported by Great Britain, Sweden and Italy.

The Ukrainian delegation was headed by Deputy Head of the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General Ivan Gavrilyuk. According to him, the goal of the new association is to strengthen the “armored shield” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “through joint efforts” to increase the capabilities of the Ukrainian military in the fight against the Russian Armed Forces, to ensure the effective operation, maintenance, and repair of equipment and weapons provided by the allies to the Kyiv regime.

It is expected that in the long term, the countries participating in the “coalition of armored vehicles” and the “tank coalition”, which was created earlier, will help create an armored fleet of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and establish an innovative and industrial partnership with Ukraine.

  • APU on Leopard 2 in the SVO zone

  • AP

  • © Andriy Andriyenko

"Produce entire weapons"

According to Getmantsev, the Kyiv regime has already managed to achieve a number of agreements with the West in the military-industrial sphere. In particular, the official recalled the recent decision of France and Germany to create in Ukraine a branch of the Franco-German corporation KNDS, which creates CAESAR self-propelled artillery mounts (SPG), Leclerc tanks, as well as other armored vehicles for the ground forces of France and Germany, including Leopard tanks 2 and self-propelled gun Panzerhaubitze 2000.

Earlier, the announcement that KNDS would produce components and ammunition in Ukraine was made by the head of the French Ministry of Defense, Sebastien Lecornu, following a meeting with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. Then Lecornu said that the branch would be created “for the direct needs of the Ukrainian army” and the production of spare parts for French and German weapons used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Over time, as the head of the French Ministry of Defense said, in Ukraine “it will be possible to produce entire weapons.”

As another example of increasing cooperation between Kyiv and the West regarding armored vehicles, Getmantsev cited the interaction of Ukraine with Spain, which, according to him, began restoring Leopard tanks that had been in storage for a long time in the kingdom.

“Last year, assessing the condition of their armored vehicles in stock in warehouses, local military experts gave it the epithet “terrible,” however, as experience has shown, it (the equipment. -

RT

) can be put in order (proven by the first nine vehicles), and after For some time, the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be replenished by the second batch of Spanish Leopards,” the Ukrainian official said.

Let us recall that earlier the Spanish media reported that we are talking about two dozen tanks of the Leopard 2A4 modification, which were stored in a warehouse in Zaragoza.

Getmantsev also recalled that the Ukrainian side continues to work with the German arms concern Rheinmetall and is counting on “progress in the implementation of agreements” on the joint production of the Swedish CV90 tracked combat vehicle.

According to the Ukrainian official, the “coalition of armored vehicles” will take a “worthy place” among other “military coalitions,” including the Western alliance to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with air defense systems, as well as the drone alliance and the cyber coalition.

“We are dealing with a war that is a combination of high-tech operations of the 21st century with the massive use of unmanned vehicles, cellular communication systems, automated command and control systems and the “most common practices” of wars of the first half of the 20th century, where tanks and armored vehicles are very important.” , - said Getmantsev.

"Unbearable burden"

However, as military expert and political scientist Ivan Konovalov noted, after the launch of the “coalition of armored vehicles” for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “nothing will change on the battlefield.”

“If we look at the history of the work of the “tank coalition”, it turned out to be practically useless, which even the Western media admitted. The same thing will happen with the new “coalition of armored vehicles,” which, apparently, will specialize, in addition to repair work, also in the supply, first of all, of light armored vehicles, which will burn out with great success in front of Russian positions in the same way as with The Leopard tanks that reached the front were half-hearted,” the analyst said in a conversation with RT.

According to the expert, the military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine within the framework of the new “coalition of armored vehicles” will apparently be repaired mainly in Poland.

“Warsaw argued for a very long time with our German colleagues about how much such repairs would cost on their territory. The Polish authorities will take money from Germany, and I am sure that they will charge higher prices than it really costs. This is also interesting for Kyiv, since it will have the opportunity to come up with corruption schemes based on the work of the new alliance. The remaining participants were forced to infiltrate this coalition for extras and some new, albeit insignificant, supplies of armored vehicles,” Konovalov explained.

At the same time, the expert doubts that within the framework of the “coalition of armored vehicles” Ukraine and its Western allies will be able to successfully implement projects for the production of NATO-style weapons and ammunition on Ukrainian territory.

“There are a lot of promises and declarations, they flow in a continuous stream, but in fact, no one in the West knows how to put all these plans into practice. None of the Western companies will establish production on the scale that Ukraine requires, since in the West there is a contract system and manufacturers will not want to do something for nothing for Ukraine. Behind-the-scenes work is underway: the authorities of Western countries are trying to come to an agreement with arms concerns, we see some plans, but not their concrete implementation,” Konovalov stated.

  • Destroyed Abrams tank near Avdeevka

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  • © Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

He called discussions about the deployment of production facilities in Ukraine funny and even stupid.

"This is ridiculous. The entire Ukrainian territory, where the military infrastructure is located, is under fire from the Russian Aerospace Forces. And military factories are also a legitimate target for Russian troops; the West understands this very well. And they are unlikely to be ready to create underground factories, which cost a lot of money and require the presence of a large number of Western specialists,” the expert believes.

Konovalov also doubted the possibility of realizing the plans of Kyiv and the Rheinmetall concern for the joint production of the Swedish CV90 tracked combat vehicle.

“Rheinmetall has cunning managers, and it is doubtful that they will start working at a loss. If the federal government of Germany pays for this whole story, it will immediately become an unbearable burden for the budget of the country, which is already going through hard times. All this will provoke severe cuts in social programs, and then one can easily imagine how the Germans will react to this - with demonstrations and shaking up the government. Therefore, everyone in the West hopes that the conflict in Ukraine will end before all these declarations on joint production have to be implemented,” Konovalov believes.

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Shalandin shares a similar opinion. According to him, no “coalition of armored vehicles” is capable of convincing arms concerns such as Rheinmetall to invest in the construction of factories and repair stations in a country where hostilities are taking place.

“Moreover, Ukraine’s economy is collapsing before our eyes, the country does not have the required number of air defense systems to protect the facilities under construction: Russian precision-guided munitions can fly there at any time and destroy everything that has been built for many months,” the expert said in a commentary to RT.

According to him, all plans announced in the West for the construction of factories and repair bases in Ukraine so far appear, for the most part, only on paper.

“At a minimum, Kyiv does not have enough capacity for this in connection with the latest attacks by the Russian Armed Forces on the infrastructure of Ukraine. The West is also not ready to produce weapons for Kyiv, as officials of the European military-industrial complex themselves reported. In addition, to organize the production of equipment to supply Kyiv, they will need at least three years. If we talk about ready-made NATO weapons, then there is very little left in the warehouses that can go to Ukraine,” concluded Oleg Shalandin.