Why Zelensky's 'Fantasy' of Building Military-Industrial Hub in Ukraine is Doomed
© AP Photo / Alex Brandon
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While in Washington DC, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with executives of US defense companies and outlined his plan to create an industrial defense hub in Ukraine. Will the plan fly?
Volodymyr Zelensky met top executives of BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, AeroVironment, and other companies of the US military-industrial complex at Ukraine House on his on-going visit to the US.
He told them that Ukraine is ready to jointly produce ammunition and weapons on its soil but needed their support. "We are ready to act quickly, and we have already started to do so, since we have no other way to change the system as we are at war," the Ukrainian president said, offering US companies a stake in Ukrainian defense firms.
However, it's unlikely that US defense contractors will rush to jump at the opportunity, said retired Colonel Anatoliy Matviychuk, a Russian military expert, who has experience in combat operations in Afghanistan and Syria.
"I think that everything that Zelensky told them was his fantasies and his attempt to come up with something," Matviychuk told Sputnik. "Who in their right mind would now invest money in a country that is practically non-existent? It's gone. It lives as a subsidy fund of the budget of the United States of America."
"Can Ukraine produce anything? I doubt it very much, because the production facilities are completely in tatters. I suppose there may be something there in Western Ukraine, but Western Ukraine has always been subsidized, there has never been heavy industry there. There are no industrial areas [in Western Ukraine], like there once were in Donetsk, Donbass, or like Yuzhmash [in Dnepropetrovsk]. I think Zelensky is simply detached from reality," the expert continued.
It’s not the first time that Zelensky has lauded Ukraine's non-existent industrial capacity: in August, the Ukrainian president announced that Kiev had increased its weapons and ammunition production. Commenting on the statement, military expert Alexei Leonkov explained to Sputnik that Ukraine's production sites, which are largely focused on assembling drones, are routinely detected and destroyed by the Russian military. Leonkov added that most of Ukraine's production prowess was destroyed soon after the collapse of the USSR due to the endemic corruption and power struggle in the Eastern European nations.
To complicate matters further, lots of Ukrainian engineers and rocket scientists fled the country after the beginning of the Russian special military operation in February 2022, noted Matviychuk, while many others have been mobilized and thrown into battle.
"Do you think North Korea's breakthrough in rocket science is an accident?" asked the expert. "I don't think so. I think Yuzhmash specialists work there. A lot of people have fled to Latin America, where they sell their expertise. And now there is a massive shortage of competently trained specialists in Ukraine. They simply don't exist. Those who were more or less patriotic died in battle, and those who were not patriotic simply left this territory and are not going to return there anymore."
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The development of Ukraine's industrial sector fits into a new strategy considered by American and Ukrainian officials. American decision-makers want Kiev to go on the defensive, dig in and replenish its weapon storages.
According to Matviychuk, Zelensky's attempts to go in line with the proposed strategy stem from his fear to lose both the Ukrainian presidency and the West's support.
"[Zelensky cannot boast] any successes at the front, while a complete defeat and capitulation looms ahead," said the expert. "Zelensky wants to protect himself personally, because for him the presidency is a way to stay alive. If he doesn’t remain a president, he will simply be removed, because he is a witness to terrible things and he knows a lot. He knows where the American money went, where Hezbollah and Hamas get weapons from. He knows how the Americans laundered money. He knows what biological laboratories operated in Ukraine."
Zelensky is trying to remain relevant in the eyes of the West, hence his fantasies about turning Ukraine into a military-industrial hub amid ongoing hostilities, according to the expert. "He can tell a lot, right down to the construction of a Ukrainian base on the Moon," remarked Matviychuk.
Matviychuk pointed out that the US is not actually interested in re-building Ukraine's industries, because American defense contractors have already created some sort of a production hub in Poland. US corporations have been developing joint military production in Poland for quite a while. In particular, in mid-September, Lockheed Martin opened its second-largest manufacturing center in the country. Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ) and the Javelin Joint Venture (JJV) – a partnership between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin – are expected to boost the production of Javelin anti-tank weapon systems. Polskie Zakłady Lotnicze Mielec, a company owned by US arms industry giant Lockheed Martin, is due to manufacture US F-16 fighter fuselage structures.
"That is, [Poland] believes that it should be ranked the first in Europe, and even wants to outpace Germany. And then Ukraine, with its wishes, begins to move in. I think that Poland will speak out very sharply regarding Ukraine at the NATO Defense Council, and there will be a very big scandal if, for example, the United States starts pushing the idea of creating similar [defense facilities] in Ukraine," said Matviychuk.
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One should keep in mind that the US defense sector has benefited a lot from the Ukraine conflict, continued the military expert.
"They forced European countries to empty their arsenals and hand over old weapons [to Kiev]," he said. "Although these [weapons] were outdated, they were still on the balance sheet of the army. The army still somehow dealt with them. Now Germans are practically exhausted. But they don’t make their own weapons, but buy everything from the United States. And the US has imposed very strict conditions on [Germans] in terms of price, delivery times, and the like."
"That is, the Americans have expanded their military-industrial complex, which, by the way, received, according to my data, over the last year about 350% of the profit from the production of weapons. And countries like France, Germany faced deficits, their production facilities don't work, due both to the economic crisis and harsh conditions imposed by the United States."
This is not the first time that the US capitalized on military action in Europe, he said. After the First World War, the US restored their production, while after the Second World War they became the hegemon in the production of weapons for Western countries, Matviychuk emphasized.
Presently, Washington wants Ukraine to take a pause and accumulate forces ahead of a new counteroffensive, the expert believes. While the Biden administration and its neocon allies appear to be interested in the continuation of the US proxy war in Ukraine, a lot depends on Europeans and domestic political situation in the US, according to the Sputnik interlocutor.
He believes that Europeans are growing tired of the conflict, while the ongoing strife between Democrats and Republicans in the US is going to become more intensive as the 2024 presidential election nears.
"I think that all these mythical projects of victory over Russia (…) are nothing more than an attempt by the Democrats to gain a foothold in power and somehow overthrow the Republicans from the pedestal," Matviychuk concluded.
