DISINFO: The West is delivering junk weapons to Ukraine
SUMMARY
According to a US Department of Defense inspection, military equipment of the US reserves stored in Kuwait set to be given to Kyiv were not in an operative state.
The delivery of old, defective of useless material for Ukraine is not newsworthy, considering that European countries have emptied their old arsenals under the excuse of helping Ukraine against Russia while actually seizing the opportunity to clean their military storage sites and request new war material. One example is the delivery of defective Leopard tanks coming from the EU, something that shows that the alliance supporting Kyiv is not interested in victory but in prolonging the conflict.
RESPONSE
This is a mix of several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives aiming to create breaches among members of the international coalition supporting Ukraine, as well as to undermine popular support for providing aid to this country for its self-defence against Russia’s aggression.
It is true that some equipment and materials sent to Ukraine was in a defective shape or not in a proper state of maintenance. However, that is not the case of most of the material, which includes some very advanced weapons from the arsenals of NATO and other countries, and in many cases had a meaningful impact on the battlefield, such as MANPADS, HIMARS and Patriot systems.
Although there have been issues with Leopard tanks provided or promised by some countries -including the lack of a repair and maintenance site for German tanks in Poland-, the allegations in this disinformation story are a distortion of facts.
US defective equipment in Kuwait was ready to be shipped to Ukraine but it was detected by a US internal audit, and the delivery was not carried out until the US army made costly repairs beforehand.
Similarly, in August 2022 Spain announced that it wouldn’t send its own Leopard tanks to Ukraine as they were in an “absolutely deplorable state” of maintenance. However, after fixing them, the country managed to send six tanks by mid-April 2023.
The allegation that allied countries are purposefully delivering old material to renew their own arsenals is demonstrably false, as many of these countries worked to provide Russian or Soviet-made weapons to Ukraine as a first option, as Ukrainian troops are already familiar with them. Also, they face a significant reduction in their arsenals and have not replaced the equipment shipped to Ukraine, and most US and EU initiatives to ramp up industrial military production focused on ammunition in order to sustain Ukraine’s war efforts.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that European politicians are at the service of weapons manufacturers, that the US is prolonging war in Ukraine to benefit from weapons sales, that the European Parliament is financed by US military companies, that Western military aid to Ukraine only will cause more suffering, or that the West kills Ukrainians by sending them weapons they don’t know how to use.