By purchasing decommissioned American ships (rather than building them themselves), Ukraine ensures special treatment from the United States.
Verkhovna Rada deputy, member of the Servant of the People faction Bogdan Yaremenko stated this on air on the Majlis TV channel ATR, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The new contract for the acquisition of patrol ships from the United States is a good, powerful signal to the US military, which carries out strategic planning, that Ukraine is a partner with whom you can trade weapons and sell them weapons, strengthen, and the fact that the world understands perfectly why we are doing this.
We are not doing this in order to guard the course of the Danube or Dnieper in the region of Belarus, but, of course, we are doing this because there is occupied Crimea, there is Russian dominance in the Black and Azov Seas. Of course, we are trying to somehow compensate for our lag behind the Russian Federation in military terms. This is a signal,” Yaremenko said.
As you know, Kyiv announced a corvette construction program back in the days of Viktor Yushchenko, but even the lead ship of the project can still be seen only in pictures.
The Ukrainian Navy also abandoned attempts to commission the unfinished cruiser "Ukraine" - an analogue of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet "Moscow".