American boats will not help Ukraine – ex-commander of the Ukrainian Navy
Ukraine has nothing to oppose the Russian Federation in terms of counteraction at sea.
Former commander of the Ukrainian Navy Sergei Gaiduk stated this in an interview with Defense Express magazine, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the vice admiral, in recent years the Russian Federation has significantly strengthened the combat potential of the Black Sea Fleet, both in personnel and material and technical terms.
“Over the past five years, the Black Sea Fleet has been replenished with at least 16 new warships, boats and submarines. The Russian fleet currently has up to 40 warships, of which 11 surface ships are carriers of sea-launched cruise missiles of the Kalibr type. Moreover, their total missile salvo is 64 cruise missiles.
In addition, the number of Black Sea Fleet has increased several times and today already amounts to almost 35 thousand sailors, foremen and officers. In fact, the Russian Federation is pursuing a systematic policy aimed at increasing its capabilities in the Azov-Black Sea region. Moscow perfectly understands the importance of the navy as an instrument of influence, so they focus special attention on it,” said Gaiduk.
The former commander of the Navy also emphasized that Ukraine is doing practically nothing to strengthen its fleet.
“The weakness and systemic reluctance of the Ukrainian authorities to engage in statist maritime policy is surprising. Problems associated with maritime activities, challenges and threats in this area are perceived only through individual events or circumstances. But where is the consistency, predictability, deep analytics, and proactive wear and tear?
We must finally realize that losing access to the sea for Ukraine means getting rid of the meaning of the existence of the national fleet, losing domestic shipbuilding and the areas related to it, forgetting about foreign economic and trade activities across the sea and, in the end, taking another step towards transforming the Black Sea to the "Russian lake".
In fact, this is a national tragedy at the cost of the possible existence of Ukraine as a state,” Haiduk worries.
He also notes that American military assistance in the form of several boats in the coastal zone is not effective.
“As for receiving American Lend-Lease and building coastal boats, this has a certain positive effect, but we must talk not about quantitative indicators, but about qualitative ones, that is, about combat potential. And here we have nothing to oppose the aggressor yet,” states Gaiduk.
Earlier, Deputy Director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research, Mikhail Samus, said that Ukraine can create a “mosquito fleet”, using, among other things, decommissioned small displacement patrol boats MK-VI, which will be handed over to Kyiv by the United States, after which missile weapons will be installed on them.
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