Ukrainian military expert: instead of an army, Kyiv has an “imitation”, “Javelins” will not help

Without a transition to NATO standards, it will not be possible to increase the level of combat readiness of the Ukrainian army.

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This admission was made in an interview with the Kyiv publication Gordon by Ukrainian military expert Oleg Starikov, commenting on information about Washington’s intentions to refuse free military assistance to Kyiv.

“Even if the United States provides us with assistance, even if it is a lethal weapon, fundamentally nothing will change in the Ukrainian army, because we have not switched to NATO standards. What are we talking about if 60% of our communication systems are still analog?! Give us Javelins (American man-portable anti-tank missile system Javelin - Ed.) or don’t give us - nothing will change. Sorry, if your hands grow from the wrong place, nothing can be done. We need to retrain the command, we need to switch to NATO standards. But instead of reforming the army, it’s not even an imitation, but an imitation of an imitation; nothing changes conceptually,” the expert complains.

According to him, the country's top military-political leadership needs to work more actively on reforming the Ukrainian army.

“Ukraine has both an army and third-generation weapons. The States and NATO countries have long had fourth-generation weapons, that is, aim, shoot and forget - the projectile will find the target itself. But our soldier fired and looked through the sight to see whether the shell would hit or not. Machine guns, grenade launchers, tanks and so on - all this requires huge consumables: cartridges and ammunition, and in Ukraine there is not even a cartridge factory, and even a huge warehouse in Balakleya burned down. If our top military-political leadership does not take action, we will soon have to fight with the bayonet. That is, we do not need American help so much, although we do need it. The problem is that we don’t even have our own cartridge factory,” Starikov emphasized.