Russian President Vladimir Putin has figured out how to disarm Ukraine. The country is making great efforts to buy weapons from various countries in order to cope with Russian military aggression.
But Putin has played a trick, and Russia is currently playing the same role in the global defense market, bidding on the same weapons and buying them before Ukraine. In addition, Moscow is trying to cut off supplies to Kyiv, writes The Walls Street Journal, citing government officials and arms brokers, Bloomberg TV Bulgaria reported.
As the heavy artillery war in eastern Ukraine shifts in Russia’s favor, Kyiv is trying to get air defense systems, armored vehicles, artillery shells and ammunition from third countries. This arms race comes when Ukraine warns it is facing defeat in the Donbass region, a major battle in the war unless the West supplies more weapons at a faster pace.
While the United States and its allies supply Western systems, many arms supplies to Ukraine include equipment from the Soviet past and / or Russian production, most commonly used by the Ukrainian military. But Western arms brokers and Ukrainian officials have said Russia is often bidding against Ukraine for these supplies and is in a hurry to strengthen its own dwindling arms depots.
“If it is taken off the market, Ukraine cannot buy it,” said a former US military official, now in the private industry who has been dealing with Russian weapons for decades.
At a briefing in Washington last month, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK and the United States had searched 23 countries holding stockpiles of Russian-made weapons and equipment to buy and hand them over to the Ukrainian military.
“Half of our help was, ‘Where can we find these things?'” Wallace said. “Sometimes we come across Russians who, by the way, are looking in some countries and are also looking for some of the reserves because they are running out quickly.”
A spokesman for the UK Ministry of Defense declined to elaborate on Wallace’s comments. Officials from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense acknowledged the difficulty, but declined to comment publicly. A spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last month, Czech and Polish brokers working on behalf of Ukraine completed a deal with a Bulgarian supplier of Russian armored vehicles and artillery shells when a group of Armenian buyers offering to pay a 50% premium managed to win the contract, a Ukrainian MP said. the negotiations.
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“We are absolutely aware that the weapons are not going to Armenia, but they will probably go to Russia,” he said. “They know what we’re looking for. And they understand where it is. “Brokers said Moscow has threatened to withdraw future parts and services for Russian-made systems that many nations rely on for their national defense.
“Sometimes you’re not sure what’s going on,” said another Ukrainian lawmaker involved in arms deals. “What you see is difficult to define other than as sabotage.” Ukraine – and the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, which are working to help Kyiv – have sometimes been late with deals or watched them disappear.
“This is due to the effectiveness of Russia and the inefficiency of the Ukrainian and intelligence services of our allies,” said the second MP. In April, Russia objected to the Pentagon’s proposal to give Ukraine 11 Russian Mi-17 military transport helicopters, which the United States purchased from Russia in 2011 for the Afghan military.
Russia’s defense ministry issued a statement calling the potential transfer to Ukraine an illegal breach of the end-user agreement, saying the transfer “constitutes a gross violation of international law and the provisions of the Russia-US treaty.” In June, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said Moscow had officially protested to the United States over breaches of its helicopter treaty obligations.
“Our embassy in the United States made an official statement to the US State Department, asking for detailed explanations as to why the Mi-17s were being transferred to Ukraine without the knowledge and consent of the exporter, Russia, and contrary to established diplomatic practice,” she said. USA Russia is the world’s largest arms exporter.
In addition to direct sales, Russian equipment, as well as older Soviet weapons, are often bought and sold by intermediary companies registered in the United States and elsewhere in the West. Russia now seems to be trying to stop these brokers from supplying weapons to Kyiv’s military efforts.
“We came across, ‘If you don’t stop buying this nonsense.’ [за Украйна]”We will never do business with you again,” said the former military official, who is now in private industry. “We will sanction you.”
In recent years, according to Western arms brokers, Moscow has not usually protested when selling Russian-made weapons. More than a decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, arms brokers serving with the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been buying military equipment designed by the Soviet Union and Russia to support Iraq and Afghanistan.
Russian law often prohibits direct participation in these sales, but Moscow has routinely encouraged transactions as a way to distribute its products. Ukraine itself has been selling Russian and Soviet equipment to arms brokers and other countries for years.
In 2014, Russia took over the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, suddenly putting the two countries in military conflict, and Moscow’s attitude toward sales of Russian-made weapons, at least to Ukraine, has changed dramatically. “They have never objected to anything,” said Ruben Johnson, a US defense consultant who has worked in Russia and Ukraine for years. “Now the Russians are intervening and saying, ‘Oh, wait a minute, we don’t like that anymore.’
Accusations of Russian interference in arms supplies to Ukraine precede the full-scale invasion that began in February. Last year, authorities in the Czech Republic accused Russian military intelligence of a deadly explosion in 2014 at an arms depot it was supplying to Ukraine.
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