NEW YORK, September 27. /TASS/. The West did not spend enough time training Ukrainian soldiers on foreign military equipment, which has made its use less effective and has led to breakdowns, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
The Ukrainian military told the newspaper that the constant use of Western weapons, say, the Panzerhaubitze, made by Germany’s Rheinmetall, had led to breakdowns. Military analysts told the newspaper that not enough time was spent training Ukrainian operators in the haste to get them back onto the battlefield. While Ukraine’s artillerymen received five weeks of training on the German howitzer, German operators typically train for four months, the WSJ said.
Less than 70% of Ukraine’s howitzers donated by foreign countries are operating at any one time, Sergey Baranov, chief of the main directorate of missile troops and artillery and unmanned systems of the Ukrainian armed forces, told the WSJ.
According to the newspaper, the Ukrainians currently operate 17 different types of Western and Soviet howitzers. These include around 200 M777 howitzers donated by the United States, Canada and Australia, at least 72 L119 howitzers, made by the US and the UK, 38 French made Caesar self propelled artillery systems, 30 British AS 90s ad some 22 Panzerhaubitze howitzers sent by Germany. Also, Ukraine uses US M109, Polish Krab and Slovakian Zuzana 2 howitzers, the WSJ said.
The Ukrainian armed forces have been making unsuccessful attempts at a counteroffensive since June 4. President Vladimir Putin said on September 12 that, since then, Ukrainian troops had lost 71,500 troops, 543 tanks and almost 18,000 armored vehicles of various types. Russia’s defense chief Sergey Shoigu released the statistics on Tuesday showing that Ukraine has sustained more than 17,000 casualties this month alone and that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to yield any tangible results.
