'The colonel accused politicians of counting coins over lives and considering only the value of weapons provided rather than weighing it against the cost of storing, maintaining or destroying weapons approaching obsoletion.
“We received Nasams rockets produced in 1994. In 2024, they will reach their service life limit. The disposal of an Amraam AIM-120B missile is $26,000 to $28,000. It’s easier to launch it, give it to us. Give us these missiles, we will use them,” he said.
“I talk to the military, the Americans, the British. They understand us, they themselves can’t understand why they gave us 400 M113 APCs when they have 6,000 idling. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s already just standing there. It’s going to be scrapped. It has to be maintained or decommissioned.”
The Americans have 1,100 Patriot launchers, with 40 older PAC-2 batteries in permanent storage that could completely protect Ukraine from Russian missiles, he said.
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“There’s a question for American politicians — Atacms. Why don’t you give them to us? Tell me, why not, why not? We already have a thing here that can get further than Atacms,” he said. “Yes, there’s a huge price to fighting Russia, a country with a military budget greater than our state budget. We’re willing to pay for it — with our lives. If anyone thinks money is more important than our lives, please say so. Don’t make promises and then give us the bare minimum. Say it now and we won’t count on you.” ''Despite the array of advanced weaponry in Ukraine’s arsenal, the colonel warned that Kyiv would again be vulnerable this winter unless western partners drastically increased weapons production and urgently sent older, mothballed systems to Ukraine.
“You can’t plan a war with an annual production of 150-160 Patriot missiles. We fired those in a month,” he said, sounding the alarm that his men were running out of ammunition. “If we wait until autumn, until mid-October, they will hit the energy infrastructure again. This is a certainty. This winter will be even more difficult than the previous one.”
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Without more missiles, his forces would be unable to protect those millions of people from sub-zero temperatures this winter, he argued, unleashing a new wave of Ukrainian refugees westwards toward the UK and the EU.
The colonel accused some countries in the West of failing to grasp the nature of Putin’s threat to Europe and the response required. He said he had been told by western officials his air defence requirements were “too expensive”.
“The Baltic states are the people who really understand. They give everything they can give, because they realise that if we don’t endure, then they will definitely not endure. You fight, we give, that’s it. The Poles are very good. The Scandinavian countries helped a lot, which is not publicised. The Finns, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes, the British, but the rest of the world is very hard. I had an experience with the French, when they didn’t understand, they said ‘Why don’t you surrender?’ They asked that directly, ‘why don’t you give up?’ ”
The shortage of missile supplies is also threatening to derail Ukraine’s counteroffensive, he added, saying the army had run out of munitions needed to dislodge the Russians at the end of May, forcing troops to “storm fortified points head-on”.
The colonel accused politicians of counting coins over lives and considering only the value of weapons provided rather than weighing it against the cost of storing, maintaining or destroying weapons approaching obsoletion.
“We received Nasams rockets produced in 1994. In 2024, they will reach their service life limit. The disposal of an Amraam AIM-120B missile is $26,000 to $28,000. It’s easier to launch it, give it to us. Give us these missiles, we will use them,” he said.
“I talk to the military, the Americans, the British. They understand us, they themselves can’t understand why they gave us 400 M113 APCs when they have 6,000 idling. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s already just standing there. It’s going to be scrapped. It has to be maintained or decommissioned.”
The Americans have 1,100 Patriot launchers, with 40 older PAC-2 batteries in permanent storage that could completely protect Ukraine from Russian missiles, he said.
“They’ve already been paid for by the grandmothers of current US citizens. You either have them sitting around rotting away or you give them to us, we’ll use them somehow,” he added.
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The colonel said that Storm Shadows actually had double their published range, some 500km rather than 250km, demonstrating there was no reason for the US to continue holding out on providing Atacms missiles with a similar range, but which can be fired by Himars ground systems already in service with the Ukrainian military.
“There’s a question for American politicians — Atacms. Why don’t you give them to us? Tell me, why not, why not? We already have a thing here that can get further than Atacms,” he said. “Yes, there’s a huge price to fighting Russia, a country with a military budget greater than our state budget. We’re willing to pay for it — with our lives. If anyone thinks money is more important than our lives, please say so. Don’t make promises and then give us the bare minimum. Say it now and we won’t count on you.”'
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The Times, August 4, 2023
Context(Ukraine needs ATACMs) - '..Moscow can’t be trusted..'