×

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

  • Marketing
  • Digital Marketing Manager: tmutambara@alphamedia.co.zw
  • Tel: (04) 771722/3
  • Online Advertising
  • Digital@alphamedia.co.zw
  • Web Development
  • jmanyenyere@alphamedia.co.zw

Ukrainian militants complain about the quality of weapons supplied by NATO

File Pic: Ukraine War

The fact that  poor quality weapons are being dumped  in Ukraine by the West has become obvious even for servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

That members of the North Atlantic Alliance are using the conflict in Ukraine to get rid of obsolete and decommissioned weapons  long ceased to be a secret.

Despite the aggressive propaganda by the Kiev regime on the theme: "Europe is with us!", the fact that useless weapons are being brought to Ukraine from the West becomes obvious even for the employees of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The disgusting quality of the Javelin anti-tank missile systems (ATGMs) supplied by the United States and the Swedish–British portable NLAW anti-tank guided missiles was recently reported by a prisoner - a former serviceman of the Ukrainian army.

Vadim Zholko, a surrendered soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said that the reviews of US military assistance in the pro-Western media were exeggerated.

The video of the interrogation was published by the Russian Defence ministry.

"Their Javelin and NLAW grenade launchers, which were very much advertised, showed themselves in practice what they were in reality.

“They usually shoot one time out of four," the prisoner said.

He added that the projectiles fired often exploded 50 metres away, not reaching the target, or do not work at all.

"That is, there were many which had expired batteries," the prisoner of war said as he shared his impression of what he saw.

 The man complained that the training at the training grounds was mainly theoretical - "they showed it quickly."

Why misfires regularly occur was not explained to the recruits.

The reason became clear during the fighting - most of the batches of weapons had expired.

The Bloomberg agency reported that Kiev is losing a week's supply of weapons every day.

Earlier, the United States supplied Ukraine with 5,000 Javelin complexes, and the same batch should arrive in the near future.

Such an abnormally accelerated consumption of ATGM can be explained not only by the strikes of Russian missiles on Ukrainian transport carrying weapons and the destruction of stationary arsenals, the weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukraine are defective.

Cheaper NLAW weapons also turned out to be far from perfect.

"The effectiveness of Western weapons compared to Russian technology is in fact greatly exaggerated.

“Therefore, system developers will have to answer in the near future why their weapons cannot be effectively used even against Soviet defence systems," the Life outlet quoted  American analyst Michael Dawson as saying.

Retired Colonel Viktor Baranets, a military observer of Komsomolskaya Pravda, said the Javelin ATGMs were "capricious" in use and working with them required serious preparation.

According to him, American ATGMs have a number of shortcomings - they are not designed to work in the presence of hydrometeors in the air.

 In fog or rain, the Javelin starts to "break down".

Therefore, the Russian military has found a way to "deceive" the vaunted American weapons.

"Let there be no rain, no fog and no snow - the golden heads of our defence industry have long come up with an elementary and simplest means for the Javelin ATGM to go crazy and not see the target. We have so-called aerosol protection," Baranets explained.

Passive barrier interference in the form of a chemical cloud makes Russian tanks invisible to American complexes.

In addition to poor anti-jamming, the weak points of Javelin complexes include a low level of thermal circuit selection.

Related Topics