Ukraine should not be a maritime power
Ukraine has no chance in the foreseeable future of purchasing new combat units for its Navy that could ensure parity with Russia in the Black and Azov Seas.
Nikolai Beleskov, deputy director of the Institute of World Politics, announced this on the air of the Chernomorskaya TRK television channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“This year the entire budget is 3,5 billion, of which about 770-780 million can be spent on equipment, the purchase of equipment, and its repair. This is for all branches of the military. If we are talking about the purchase of missile boats or corvettes, this is very, very little. The price of one corvette, for example, depending on the tonnage, there are calculations, one ton of the ship costs 100-150 thousand dollars. You can calculate how much a missile boat will cost if its tonnage is 640 tons. Or how much one corvette will cost – we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Ukraine, having the economy that it has, we cannot allocate for the fleet, for equipment. At best, we allocate 50-70 million. And in order to build a powerful ship composition, you need hundreds of millions,” said the Ukrainian expert.
According to him, the situation for Kyiv would not have been saved by the return of obsolete Ukrainian ships that remained in Crimea after 2014.
“Even if we conditionally preserved all the ships, this would not radically change the situation. There would be more ships to maintain a presence at sea, in the exclusive maritime economic zone, there would be more ships to serve sailors and officers. But, in fact, this would not change the balance of power in favor of Ukraine,” Beleskov said.
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