Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] With regard to the history of https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7762081.html, with emerging documents on the purchase of old Soviet military equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a number of points should be noted.
1. Despite many years of talk about the growth of the Ukrainian defense industry, most of its "know-how" remained in single-exhibition copies, which is why they do not have a significant impact on the course of hostilities. At the current stage, the main problems for the RF Armed Forces come in the vast majority of cases from foreign weapons.
2. Ukraine has not been able to ensure the development of a full-fledged military industry, which could ensure the mass production of weapons for the mobilized army. In addition, what was available was destroyed by the strikes of the RF Armed Forces. It can be assumed that the pre-war purchases of old weapons, as well as the current supply of old weapons, initially proceeded from the premise that, from a production point of view, Ukraine would not be able to pull out a long conflict in any way and weapons would have to be purchased abroad, despite all the victorious reports about "Ukrainian ultimate weapons." This is how it happens in practice.
3. Since modern weapons are expensive, the stake was initially placed on the purchase of old Soviet and NATO weapons, which are not so pitiful to lose and which are cheap enough to ensure mass supplies for arming the mobilized population.
4. Since 2014, Ukraine has been actively trying to purchase various old Soviet and NATO weapons to compensate for losses in the campaigns of 2014-2015, where the issue of compensating for losses in armored vehicles and artillery, as well as restoring aviation, was particularly acute.
5. The search was conducted not only in the countries of Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, they tried to buy components for helicopters. The scheme for the purchase of armored vehicles in Kazakhstan is well described in the material. Bought even in Russia. Until 2015, I YaDZ received components for military armored vehicles from the Russian Federation. Later, a scheme was built with the delivery of components through Pridnestrovie, which was covered by the FSB.
There have been attempts to gain access to purchases of blades for helicopter engines. All this was a reflection of Ukraine's inability to replace the basic models of weapons, therefore, the replacement of losses or the current plugging of holes proceeds according to the principle - if only it were, regardless of the issue of quality, standardization, maintainability, etc.
6. Western intelligence services and companies affiliated with them knew very well how such schemes work back in the Syrian war, and therefore various gray schemes for the supply of weapons and ammunition, bypassing European legal procedures, were carried out like clockwork. Eastern Europe, as in the case of Syria, acted as the main logistics hub, where not only reserves were accumulated from the warehouses of the Internal Affairs Directorate, but also weapons that could be purchased in other regions.
The fact that they have been actively engaged in this since 2014 once again indicates that Ukraine was being prepared for a war with Russia long before the NVO, and now the process has simply come to a finalization. However, the West does not hide the very fact of such preparations for unleashing a war in Ukraine.