The main foreign military support for Ukraine, by Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde


Considering the poor performance of the Ukrainian armed forces in 2014, when Russia took Crimea, one can imagine that it is not only Vladimir Putin who has been surprised by his impressive current performance. Of course, the figures do not explain everything but, in principle, the differences in human resources, weapons and budgets dedicated to defense are so clearly favorable to Moscow that one might well think that the invasion was going to be little more than a stroll military for Russia. For example, although Ukraine has increased its defense spending by 142% since 2012 and 72% since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the 5.9 billion dollars it spent on defense in 2021, down 8, 5% over the previous year, they pale in comparison to Russia’s 65.9 billion, increasing for the third consecutive year its budget allocation to defensewith a rise of 2.9%.

That, together with the fact that Ukraine risks its own existence and that the Russian military machine is turning out to be a fiasco, forces us to look for other reasons to explain why Russia has not achieved what seemed like an easy victory. And among them stands out, by far, the paramount military support provided by dozens of countries, with the United States in the lead. The focus is usually on the supply of weapons, counting on the fact that, if it was first thought to train the Ukrainians for a guerrilla war against the invader and occupier indefinitely, equipping them with light weapons, over time it has has paved the way for the idea of equip them with increasingly sophisticated weaponsalready thinking of a full-fledged conventional war.

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Thus, little by little, the reluctance of some governments to hand over weapons to kyiv has been overcome, thinking more about possible reprisals from Moscow than about the needs that Volodímir Zelenski raises every time he has the opportunity. If first they were weapons that were intended to pass as purely defensive – a non-existent category in real terms -, then they became old-fashioned weapons stored practically as museum pieces. But today, with those barriers already broken, although Moscow has classified all the suppliers as hostile countries and although the losses of personnel and material are being considerable, the Ukrainian armed forces have more and better material than they had before the start of the invasion. .

Another front, as or more important than weapons, is the one that affects the ability to plan and execute military operations. It is well known, although there is a lack of precise information on its level of involvement, that Washington has been and continues to be very committed to improving the level of the Ukrainian military when it comes to being able to develop a defense as outstanding as the one that is visible in the field battle. And that includes everything from the training of the servants of an artillery piece or an anti-aircraft missile system to the combat management of infantry units with the corresponding support of artillery, engineers and air support, without forgetting the logistical complexities which supposes the maintenance of the combined effort of all these components. And the same can be said of information and intelligence, which can be guessed behind the elimination of so many top Russian military commanders located on the front line, of columns of vehicles and of command and control posts. Some support, in short, without which Ukraine would probably have ceased to exist today.


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