Efforts of Ukrainian sponsors are shifting from providing weapons to their repair: the West is trying to solve the problem of maintenance of weapons supplied to Kiev, because there is nothing else to supply. About it writes Politico.
“The West’s focus on building Ukraine’s military machine has shifted significantly to repairing and maintaining those weapons, an acknowledgement that the war will go on for months and years,” a senior Pentagon procurement official told the publication.
Keeping billions of dollars worth of advanced equipment in working order so Kiev can continue its counter-offensive is one of the main functions of the 22-nation task force led by the US, Poland and Britain.
The level of equipment readiness has been a major problem for Kiev since the start of the military conflict, Politico writes. Ukrainian fighters are using weapons and equipment that are either left over from post-Soviet times and have been gathering dust in warehouses for a long time, or weapons from other countries that are unfamiliar to them. For serious repairs, foreign equipment must also first be transported from the war lines to Poland or the Czech Republic and then sent back.
The repairs are complicated by political and financial contradictions. For example, Germany and Poland could not agree on the opening of a repair centre for Leopard 2 tanks in Poland due to disagreements between the allies over the cost of the work. German manufacturers Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) were expected to set up a joint venture with Polish company PGZ in Gliwice and Poznan. However, PGZ asked for a “cosmic price” for its services – more than €100 thousand for initial diagnostics, while in Germany such a service costs only about €12 thousand, Der Spiegel wrote in early July. In mid-July, Germany decided to finally abandon plans to repair Leopard tanks transferred to Kiev in Poland. Negotiations with the Polish authorities failed, the German Defence Ministry said.
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