Will the West arm Ukraine's three million-strong army?

On June 15, 2022, a regular meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group was held in Brussels at the NATO headquarters in person. It was attended by defence ministers from more than 50 countries providing military assistance to Ukraine, including all 30 NATO countries.

This is the third meeting, and they are held monthly. The first one was held on April 26, 2022, and 40 countries were represented. The second meeting will be held on May 23, 2022, with 47 countries already present. And now – more than 50. Thus, the anti-Russian coalition is growing month by month. All these gatherings are presided over by US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.

Let me remind you that shortly before the meeting in Brussels, on June 13, adviser to the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak wrote on his Twitter: "To put it bluntly – to end the war, we need parity of heavy weapons: 1000 howitzers of 155 mm caliber; 300 MLRS; 500 tanks; 2000 armoured vehicles; 1000 drones. A meeting of the Contact Group of Defence Ministers will be held in Brussels on June 15. We are waiting for a decision."

Based on data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), experts assessed the reality of the implementation of this Ukrainian "order". It turned out that the US Armed Forces, in particular, have at their disposal only about 900 towed M777 howitzers of 155 mm caliber (already without the 108 delivered to the UAF) and 635 of the M142 HIMARS and M270 MLRS type. It means it’s necessary to give to Ukraine all its M777 howitzers and almost half of its MLRS. The United States is unlikely to do so.

The request for tanks is fully practicable. The US Armed Forces have about 2,645 Abrams tanks in service, and about 3,450 tanks are in storage. But here, of course, there are difficulties with the training of Ukrainian personnel. The crew of the Abrams tank consists of 4 people, respectively, it is necessary to train at least 2000 people, and there are also maintenance units. In general, this is not an easy task from the point of view of organisation, which requires considerable effort and time.

Of course, Podolyak's figures are somewhat overstated, but they are taken in perspective, taking into account potential losses. And the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation set a high pace for the disposal of heavy weapons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As of 11 a.m. on June 17, 2022, the Russian Armed Forces destroyed a total of 205 aircraft, 131 helicopters, 1,233 UAVs, 342 air defence systems, 3,587 tanks and armoured vehicles, 539 MLRS systems, 2013 guns and mortars, and 3,658 units of special equipment.

By the way, on June 15, the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, Mark Milley, held a rather informative press conference for journalists, where they revealed in detail the quantitative and qualitative parameters of military assistance to Ukraine.

Mark Milley explained to reporters that the Pentagon is guided by those requests for the supply of weapons sent by the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine: "They requested 10 artillery divisions; 12 artillery divisions were delivered. Again, I would say 97,000 anti-tank systems. This is more anti-tank systems than tanks in the world.

They asked for 200 tanks and got 237 tanks. They asked for 100 infantry fighting vehicles, and received more than 300. We have delivered, roughly speaking, 1,600 or so air defence systems and about 60,000 anti-aircraft shells... When I say 'we', I mean the international community."

Thus, Ukrainian applications are even overfilled. More than 700 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial vehicles, 20 Mi-17 helicopters, thousands of small arms and hundreds of thousands of small arms ammunition were also delivered to Ukraine.

At the press conference, data was provided on how many Ukrainian servicemen were trained in the use of Western weapons: 420 people were trained with the M777 howitzer, 300 people - with the M109 self-propelled gun, 129 people - with the M113 armoured personnel carrier, 100 people - with unmanned aerial vehicles, 60 people completed training on the M142 HIMARS on June 15.

The supply of multiple launch rocket systems deserves special attention due to their high combat power and long range of destruction. Ukraine will soon receive four M142 HIMARS launchers from the United States and three M270 MLRS launchers from Britain. Germany will hand over three M270 MLRS missile launchers in August. Total: 10 missile launchers.

As General Mark Milley put it, "this is a starter kit”. He also named the maximum range of the M142 HIMARS - 85 kilometres. Obviously, the volume of MLRS deliveries will be directly related to the number of trained Ukrainian specialists. According to Milley, the United States "will transfer HIMARS systems, ammunition and trained crews for operational use for the defence of Ukraine by the end of June."

Deliveries of cannon artillery will also continue. The United States will transfer 18 more 155 mm M777 towed howitzers and 36,000 rounds of ammunition to them. In total, according to the results of the meeting in Brussels, donor countries are ready to provide Ukraine with about 100 towed and self-propelled howitzers in the near future. Thus, the total number of cannon artillery transferred by the West will reach 300-400 units.

An important point. The volume of deliveries of Western weapons following the results of the current meeting of the Defence of Ukraine Contact Group is significantly, at times, less than the volumes that were agreed at previous similar events.

It seems that the United States and other Western countries have already chosen their surplus weapons, and further supply to Ukraine can only be carried out by partially disarming them. And this is a rather painful question.

Yes, and the Kiev regime issues initiative after initiative. While in Washington, the head of the faction of the Ukrainian ruling “Servant of the People” party, David Arakhamia, said that Ukraine has mobilised one million people into the armed forces and has the opportunity to mobilise two million more. Potentially, the number of the Ukrainian Armed Forces can reach three million people.

However, they still have nothing to arm them with. And this question Arakhamia put before the United States and the West as a whole. The essence of the information message of the Kiev regime is clear: it once again confirms the readiness to conduct military operations within the framework of the Western strategy of "war to the last Ukrainian". Now the West must do its part in the same strategy – allocate weapons and train personnel.

Of course, the solution to such a large-scale task will mostly fall on the US military-industrial complex, since Washington's allies are largely armed with American weapons. If we consider this issue from a purely economic point of view, then getting a defence order to equip the armed forces of three million people is a huge success and a lot of money. The same US Armed Forces number about 1.4 million people.

From an economic point of view, restarting the military-industrial complex will help the United States survive the global economic crisis and potentially even get out of it with a plus.

However, if to look at the problem from the other side, then everything does not look so rosy. After all, Russia will not sit idly by and will be forced to mobilise in order to oppose the Ukrainian three million people with a group of at least one and a half million people.

And no matter how much the West wants it, sooner or later this Russian group of one and a half million people, equipped with the most modern weapons, having combat experience, the victorious army, will reach the borders of Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

And then what should the West do?

Perhaps this, or a similar situation, is what the former chief of the British Defence Staff, General David Richards, had in mind when he criticised the West for its lack of a coherent strategy on Ukraine, describing the current approach as "let's see how it turns out”.

David Richards believes that "there is little understanding in London, Washington or anywhere else" of how the current conflict in Ukraine should develop or what kind of Russia the West sees in the future, "especially in the vital issue of long-term relations with China”.

Thus, the position of the United States and Britain, as the main moderators of the Ukrainian crisis, in the style of "let's see how it turns out" has its own time frame and resource limit in the form of arms supplies to Ukraine.

The situation for Washington and London is approaching a fork in the road: either allocate weapons in small doses so that they themselves do not disarm much, or restart the military-industrial complex for the massive supply of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and get a guaranteed multiple build-up of Russian military potential in Ukraine with unpredictable consequences for the future. We will see the answer in terms of the volume of Western arms supplies to Ukrainian territory.