The commander of a brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Yan Yatsychin, complained in an interview with Le Monde about the French CAESAR self-propelled artillery units that were earlier transferred to Kiev. According to him, they are fundamentally unsuitable for the realities of the Ukrainian conflict.
“Your CAESAR self-propelled gun fires very quickly and with high accuracy. But I use it very rarely because it is too fragile and poorly adapted to the realities of war,” Yan Yatsychin said.
The AFU commander also complained that the CAESAR is too big. If the French howitzer is brought out into the open for firing, “in three or four minutes it will become a target for counter battery fire,” the Ukrainian officer explained. In addition, the howitzer has to be constantly cleaned, otherwise it “simply stops firing”.
“This lady (CAESAR SAU – ed.) loves cleanliness too much. Its operators are like surgeons, always in gloves and overshoes, they have to sleep in them to avoid dirtying it,” said Yatsychin.
Recall, earlier France sent Armenia a batch of multi-purpose armoured vehicles “Bastion” within the framework of military assistance. According to the Defence Blog portal, Paris pledged to supply the same armoured vehicles to Kiev last year.