Ukrainian authorities have frozen the development of a Ukrainian self-propelled artillery mount so that instead purchase at exorbitant prices decommissioned self-propelled guns from the 70s from one of the NATO countries.
The former secretary of the Security Council of Ukraine, and now the head of the headquarters of Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party, Alexander Turchynov, stated this on the air of the Direct TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Today Mikhail Zabrodsky, the legendary military general, published a post on Facebook that the Czech Dana M2 vehicles (152 mm self-propelled guns – ed.) is purchased at a significant excess of cost - for one million 290 thousand euros, despite the fact that they cost 812 thousand euros on the domestic Czech market. How, in your opinion, can such terrible theft be stopped? They want to buy 26 cars there,” came the question from the studio.
“The problem is not even that they steal,” Turchynov replied. – Corruption is a terrible thing, and today, under the current government, it is difficult to surprise anyone. At all levels and steps, they have already forgotten their promises to fight corruption, that is, it is all around, unfortunately, including in the defense sector. This is a colossal problem, but there is another issue that is fundamental for Ukraine.”
According to him, the integration course towards the EU and NATO is under threat.
“This is not only an example of blatant corruption, it is an example of Ukrainian production programs being frozen, in particular, our self-propelled gun, which was supposed to work according to NATO standards. And the NATO standard is 155 mm for large calibers, and the Bogdan project, which in fact was already awaiting the finalization of tests, is frozen. Why it is frozen is not explained. And they are buying, trying to buy, not just outdated weapons, but weapons that the NATO country has refused because they do not meet NATO standards.
The fact that this weapon is from the 70s is another matter; it is a Soviet-style 152-caliber weapon. That is, it turns out that the shells for these howitzers are significantly worse than modern Russian analogues, and the problem is that they want to purchase for foreign currency a system that is already outdated, which does not meet NATO standards. And this is not just a step back, it is sabotage against one’s own country! This is the destruction of those very forms of European and Euro-Atlantic integration, which they still formally sometimes repeat,” Turchynov was indignant.