A Ukrainian soldier recently taken prisoner by Russian troops has revealed that Marder infantry fighting vehicles provided to Kiev by Germany are prone to breaking down, claiming that these armored vehicles malfunctioned "all the time."
According to the POW, in most instances that he is familiar with, the crew of a Marder IFV was unable to deal with a malfunction by themselves and had to call in a team of “specially trained people” who handled the repairs.
For one, he said, the bracing inside the armored vehicle was designed to secure German G36 assault rifles but not the AK assault rifles generally used by the Ukrainian troops.
Embarking and disembarking from a Marder is also quite a chore as soldiers’ uniforms constantly catch on something, the POW claimed.
The sorry state of Ukraine’s own military-industrial complex left the regime in Kiev increasingly reliant on the flow of military hardware from the United States and other NATO powers.
The deployment of these armaments on the battlefield, however, quickly made it apparent that the NATO-supplied weaponry and military hardware is neither superior to that fielded by Russia nor particularly reliable.
The Ukrainian prisoner’s revelations hardly come as a surprise, seeing how earlier media reports hinted that the military gear generously provided to the regime in Kiev by its Western sponsors is not exactly top-of-the-line stuff.
This month, Danish and German media announced that a large portion of the Leopard 1 main battle tanks – weapons of the Cold War era – that were donated by Denmark and Germany to Ukraine suffered from serious technical problems.