NATO Arms Designed to ‘Keep Kiev on Life Support’, Not Enable Ukraine to ‘Win’
14:54 GMT 03.03.2024 (Updated: 16:21 GMT 03.03.2024)
© AP Photo / Sergei Chuzavkov
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Ukraine’s president has complained to his Western sponsors about the holdup in arms deliveries. Veteran Soviet and Russian officer and military journalist Viktor Litovkin tells Sputnik how Kiev allowed itself to become trapped in a highly unenviable strategic position.
President Zelensky slammed his NATO patrons on Saturday, accusing them of playing “internal political games” instead of ramping up much-needed military support for Kiev.
“This is impossible to understand. It is impossible to agree to this. And it will be impossible to forget; the world will remember this,” Zelensky said, emphasizing that Kiev’s ‘partners’ have “enough air defense systems” and that “Kiev hasn’t asked for anything more than needed” for its defense.
Zelensky made the comments against the background of the ongoing deadlock in Washington regarding $61 billion in fresh US military support for Ukraine, which the MAGA Republican-dominated House of Representatives has vowed to hold up until more is done to address the crisis at the US’s southern border, and unless the aid is provided in the form of a loan.
The spending deadlock aside, Western officials have reason to be wary of further military assistance to Ukraine, having already spent so much taxpayer money, and damaged their reputations, preparing Kiev for a much-vaunted counteroffensive last summer only to see it fail spectacularly.
Déjà vu: Why West has reasons to doubt Zelensky amid fresh demands for arms aid
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Ukraine’s president issued a sharp rebuke to his Western sponsors on Saturday, accusing them of getting caught up in “internal political games” instead of ramping up support for Kiev. “This is… pic.twitter.com/OenJ0MgOk1
Kiev has received over $265 billion in foreign military and economic aid to date, with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy tracking some €115 billion+ ($125 billion US)-worth in arms assistance alone – which is over one and a half times Russia’s entire defense budget in 2023.
Kiel Institute for the World Economy data on Western countries' arms aid to Ukraine between January 2022 and January 2024.
© Photo : Kiel Institute for the World Economy
“Nothing will help Ukraine...But keeping it on life support is possible, including through the supply of Western weapons, ammunition and so on,” retired Soviet and Russian Army colonel Viktor Litovkin told Sputnik, commenting on Zelensky’s remarks.
Comparing Ukrainian authorities to a terminally ill patient, Litovkin emphasized that the Western alliance and its clients don’t have the capabilities to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
“Last year’s counteroffensive failed for one simple reason: because, first and foremost, it was based on NATO tactics, NATO operational doctrine, and according to NATO regulations. NATO has never fought with an army of equal strength and power, and is not in a condition to overcome powerful, deeply layered defenses and large-scale minefields,” Litovkin explained, referring to the Russian multilayered defensive positions set up in Zaporozhye, Kherson and the Donbass in late 2022 and early 2023.
“No matter how much and whom Zelensky criticizes, it was clear from the outset that it was pointless for Ukraine to fight Russia, because Russia has a powerful defense industry, a powerful military, while Ukraine plundered its defense industry and destroyed itself,” Litovkin added, pointing out that the vast defense industrial base that Kiev was left with after the collapse of the USSR has been whittled away to the bone over the past three decades.
Regarding Zelensky’s complaint that NATO is not providing the “required amount of weapons,” Litovkin said that’s the case “for a simple reason: because it is not Ukraine that’s at war with Russia, but NATO and the United States. Their task is not to ‘defeat’ Russia, but to ruin Russia, to weaken Russia. Therefore, Ukraine is given weapons on the principle of ‘feeding the dog so that it does not die of hunger’ but can bark loudly and bite painfully. Nothing more is required from Kiev. The fact that Ukrainian soldiers and officers are dying – the West doesn’t care about them, they’re not theirs.”
“The Kiev regime is only an instrument in this war. Therefore, its dependence on the West is critical,” the observer, who is a graduate of the Lvov Higher Military-Political School, said.
“Once upon a time, Ukraine was one of the ten largest arms exporting countries in the world. It had three military districts – in Kiev, Odessa, and Carpathia, to which arms and ammunition were brought from the [Soviet] Southern Group of Forces, the Central Group of Forces from Hungary and Czechoslovakia” after the liquidation of the Warsaw Pact. “They sold everything off, do you understand? They ruined and plundered their entire industry. Therefore, they have nothing to fight with, nothing of their own,” Litovkin summed up.
16 September 2016, 11:39 GMT
