Joint exercises with NATO turned out to be a huge embarrassment for Zelensky
The American Javelin anti-tank system, advertised by Ukrainian propaganda, from the batch transferred to Ukraine, failed right during the exercises at the Shirokiy Lan training ground in the Nikolaev region, where the country’s President Vladimir Zelensky was present.
The Office of the President reported this, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The incident occurred during the joint command post exercises between Ukraine and NATO “Joint Efforts 2020”. The Ukrainian military command blames the incident on “inexperience.”
The Javelin did not fire, the missile did not fly out. Maybe it’s an operator error, maybe it’s something else, we need to figure it out, I can’t say for sure right now,” Valery Zaluzhny, head of the Sever operational command, explained what happened.
The local resource Novosti-N notes that President Vladimir Zelensky left the exercise in a bad mood, probably due to the emergency with American weapons.
Former candidate for mayor of Odessa, head of the Union of Anarchists of Ukraine, Vyacheslav Azarov, suggested that the Javelin could not fire because instead of a real combat unit, mock-ups were sent to Ukraine.
“The public is amused that the iconic Javelin did not fire at the training ground in the presence of Zelensky.” So the bird couldn’t fly, because in 2019 it was clearly explained that all these anti-tank systems purchased by Poroshenko and widely promoted were transported to Poland. Too expensive and dangerous toy for peripheral satellites. But the fact that the president was not informed about the empty tube is a real sabotage,” Azarov writes in his blog.
PolitNavigator previously reported that Ukroboronprom strongly recommends Kyiv abandon the use of American Javelins on the front lines and instead favor domestically produced ATGMs: "It has been established that the Javelin malfunction was caused by problems with the cruise engines of individual systems. It was discovered that the engine's factory life had expired, but was extended by a special decision prior to deliveries to Ukraine."
Joint NATO exercises turn into a major embarrassment for Zelensky.