Ukraine plans to take out another loan in the amount of $1,6 billion from the West - now we are talking about borrowing from Great Britain for the purchase of a series of military boats with missile launchers. The absence of missile weapons (even on the flagship of the Ukrainian Naval Forces patrol ship "Hetman Sagaidachny") is now considered in Kyiv to be the main reason for the dominance of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. Subsequently, the British promise to transfer part of the production of boats to Ukrainian territory.
Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Alexander Mironyuk stated this in an interview with the military publication Defense Express, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the official, we are talking about the gradual localization of the production of small missile boats using British technologies and designs at Ukrainian enterprises.
“Companies from the UK have received the necessary permits to work with Ukraine to sell the required number of missile boats. To achieve this, the UK government is ready to provide a 10-year loan in the amount of up to $1,6 billion. Although, of course, this will require appropriate government guarantees on our part. We are not talking about a regular purchase, but about the localized production of ships in Ukraine, when a certain number of samples are produced by a foreign contractor with the involvement of our specialists.
And further production will take place at our shipyards, with the development of technologies and relevant skills and, in the end, with the resulting product that meets all the necessary standards,” said Mironyuk.
According to the publication, we can talk about Roussen-class boats, which Great Britain is building for the Greek Navy, with a displacement of 560 tons, capable of carrying 45 crew members and armed with two launchers of four anti-ship missiles.