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Why Zelensky’s ‘Fantasy’ of Building Military-Industrial Hub in Ukraine is Doomed

 Sputnik,  12.12.2023

While in Washington DC, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with executives of US defense companies and outlined his plan to create an industrial defense hub in Ukraine. Will the plan fly?

Volodymyr Zelensky met top executives of BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, AeroVironment, and other companies of the US military-industrial complex at Ukraine House on his on-going visit to the US.

He told them that Ukraine is ready to jointly produce ammunition and weapons on its soil but needed their support. “We are ready to act quickly, and we have already started to do so, since we have no other way to change the system as we are at war,” the Ukrainian president said, offering US companies a stake in Ukrainian defense firms.

However, it’s unlikely that US defense contractors will rush to jump at the opportunity, said retired Colonel Anatoliy Matviychuk, a Russian military expert, who has experience in combat operations in Afghanistan and Syria.

“I think that everything that Zelensky told them was his fantasies and his attempt to come up with something,” Matviychuk told Sputnik. “Who in their right mind would now invest money in a country that is practically non-existent? It’s gone. It lives as a subsidy fund of the budget of the United States of America.”

“Can Ukraine produce anything? I doubt it very much, because the production facilities are completely in tatters. I suppose there may be something there in Western Ukraine, but Western Ukraine has always been subsidized, there has never been heavy industry there. There are no industrial areas [in Western Ukraine], like there once were in Donetsk, Donbass, or like Yuzhmash [in Dnepropetrovsk]. I think Zelensky is simply detached from reality,” the expert continued.

It’s not the first time that Zelensky has lauded Ukraine’s non-existent industrial capacity: in August, the Ukrainian president announced that Kiev had increased its weapons and ammunition production. Commenting on the statement, military expert Alexei Leonkov explained to Sputnik that Ukraine’s production sites, which are largely focused on assembling drones, are routinely detected and destroyed by the Russian military. Leonkov added that most of Ukraine’s production prowess was destroyed soon after the collapse of the USSR due to the endemic corruption and power struggle in the Eastern European nations.

To complicate matters further, lots of Ukrainian engineers and rocket scientists fled the country after the beginning of the Russian special military operation in February 2022, noted Matviychuk, while many others have been mobilized and thrown into battle………………………………………………….

US and Poland Don’t Need Industrial Hub in Ukraine

The development of Ukraine’s industrial sector fits into a new strategy considered by American and Ukrainian officials. American decision-makers want Kiev to go on the defensive, dig in and replenish its weapon storages.

According to Matviychuk, Zelensky’s attempts to go in line with the proposed strategy stem from his fear to lose both the Ukrainian presidency and the West’s support………………………………………………. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231212/why-zelenskys-fantasy-of-building-military-industrial-hub-in-ukraine-is-doomed-1115539804.html

December 16, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war