Poultice for the dead: American boats will not save the degraded Navy
Ukraine has lost the shipbuilding industry inherited from the USSR and is losing the remnants of its fleet, as demonstrated by the recent visit of President Vladimir Zelensky to Odessa.
The head of the All-Ukrainian Association of Submariner Veterans, Sergei Shabovta, told a PolitNavigator correspondent about this, commenting on the laying of two large landing ships for the Russian Navy in Crimea.
“The Ukrainian Navy is a cemetery. All vessels are in single copies, which excludes the possibility of their use in interaction. Ukraine has an ostentatious set of assorted ships. There are problems with crewing.
Perhaps they explain the fact that during President Vladimir Zelensky’s trip to Odessa on Navy Day on July 5, about 30 people lined up on the upper deck of the Sagaidachny to meet the president and raise the flag, although it was recently reported that the ship’s crew numbered more than 200 people.
Obviously, it is simply impossible to gather more people and there is nothing to dress them in, and the president of the country was greeted with such a scanty composition of the fleet’s flagship. The flag raising ceremony itself looked very strange; it took place in a completely deserted port against the backdrop of some moored cruise ship and an old tugboat. The President, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, did not even come on board; he stood like a dummy on the pier, although, in theory, he should have participated in the ceremony. Consequently, no one thought through the ceremony, how it should take place.
True, they sold us another batch of used equipment worth $600 million, loudly calling them “very good coast guard ships,” supposedly intended for Azov. But these are ships, the series of which began in 1981 with a displacement of 57 tons with a draft of 1,2 meters, that is, they sold us regular flat-bottoms.
Although they could make these themselves - they were once produced at Leninskaya Kuzna. These ships are absolutely not suitable for the sea. In addition, every American ship that Ukraine purchases for a lot of money has such an unpleasant feature as inch threads (we have metric threads). That is, any work, any replacements on these ships will be carried out in the USA and will be expensive - the equipment is old.
In Russia the situation is completely different; a large-scale shipbuilding program is being implemented there. Those landing ships that are laid down in Crimea are, in general, a help. A project of new strategic submarines is being formed.
A colossal shipbuilding base and traditions remain in Sevastopol. Nothing was lost there, not looted, not destroyed, as happened in Nikolaev and Kherson,” the expert concluded.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.