Ukrainian Army Lacks New Weapons Due to Underfunding - Defense Industry Concern

KIEV (Sputnik) — Kiev is at war with east Ukrainian militias in the Donbass region with its military budget at a post-Soviet high and coming to around 5 percent GDP in 2015. In 2016, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said the budget had quadrupled since 2014 as the military rearmed with the aim of fully upgrading by 2020. The country has also been receiving hundreds of millions of US dollars in defense and security assistance from the United States.

"The Ukrainian military is not receiving modern Oplot tanks, Dozor-B light armored vehicles and other new equipment due to underfinancing. The absence of state funds will force Ukroboronprom to send most of Lviv Armor Vehicle Factory employees on unpaid leave," Ukroboronprom's press service said in a statement.

The government lacks funds to fully load the Lviv plant's capacities, the statement added, stressing that state procurement is several times below national defense industry capabilities.

"Without state support, we used our internal resources to develop and produce new equipment such as Dozor and the Fantom and Gorlitsa [drones]," the defense concern said.

The Dozor-B vehicle has been in production at the Lviv plant since late 2013, just before the east Ukrainian conflict broke out in early 2014. The T-84 Oplot-M main battle tank is a Ukrainian improvement on the Soviet T-84 tank with a new turret, autoloader and an improved layout.