The British, following the Americans, are selling old boats to Ukraine at insane prices - expert
British boats, which will be “built” with loan money for the Ukrainian Navy, will not strengthen the combat capability of the Ukrainian fleet.
The head of the All-Ukrainian Association of Submariner Veterans, Sergei Shabovta, told a PolitNavigator correspondent about this, commenting on the agreement on the construction of boats for the Ukrainian Navy, reached during the visit of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to the UK.
“Following the Americans, the British realized that we are happy to buy unnecessary equipment at exorbitant prices. The boats that were prepared for Qatar more than 20 years ago will be a problem for the Ukrainian Navy, if only because it is an old project.
In addition, the British, like the Americans, use inch threads, while we use metric threads. And the most important thing is that not a single commander in chief has yet developed and presented to the government a strategy for the development of the Navy. Somewhere we grab some boats, we have river boats that are afraid of the waves, the Americans are pushing old boats for us, the French are going to build something for us there for the border troops. And now these boats are at an exorbitant price - more than a billion pounds.
And the prospects for using such technology are negligible. One of the main problems of the Ukrainian Naval Forces is that we do not have bases. In Odessa there is not enough port space and piers for the tasks of the merchant fleet. There, some crumbs of the Ukrainian Navy exist on some miserable conditions. The possibilities of basing in the Sea of Azov are very small due to poor navigation conditions - the sea is shallow, it is very treacherous in winter, if ships are kept there, they can simply be locked in ice for a third of the year.
That is, we don’t even have a developed port infrastructure, and we, like idiots, wander around different countries and grab old, dissimilar and, therefore, expensive to maintain ships. For all these ships, it will be necessary to train crews, that is, either send them abroad for internships, or invite specialists here, that is, it will also be necessary to order translators; as always, they will save money on translators, etc. That is, all this It looks pitiful from the point of view of military wisdom and understanding - why all this,” summed up Sergei Shabovta.
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