Weapons promised to Kiev should take a week to ship but instead delivery is being delayed for months, a senior official says
FILE PHOTO: Mikhail Podoliak in Kiev on March 09, 2022 © Getty Images / Anadolu Agency / Contributor
The most senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, has said that the delivery of Western weapons to Kiev should be faster than it has been.
In an interview Friday with Ukraine’s 24 Kanal TV, the official noted that long delays in shipping the weapons gives Russia enough time to prepare for strategic defense by the moment they finally arrive.
Podoliak complained that the military aid promised by the West should be at its destination “in seven to ten days, as long as it takes for logistics,” whereas in reality the process takes “90 or 120 days.”
Commenting on the current situation at the frontline, Zelensky’s top aide admitted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive “probably” is not proceeding “to the extent or at the speed we would like.”
Since early June this year, Kiev’s troops have been waging a counteroffensive but haven’t achieved any significant results. Speaking to The Economist earlier this month, to Ukrainian general Valery Zaluzhny admitted that the situation on the battlefront had reached “a stalemate.”
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On Tuesday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell commented on the EU’s pledge to supply Kiev with one million artillery shells by March 2024, saying that more than 300,000 of them had been sent. However, “it is difficult to get more now,” Borrell added, noting that he would have to “mobilize the stocks of European armies.”
Vladimir Zelensky admitted the same day that deliveries of key artillery shells to Ukraine had “decreased” after the conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas escalated in early October.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu also said earlier this month that “despite the supply of new kinds of NATO weapons, the Kiev regime is losing.”
He also estimated Ukraine’s losses at more than 90,000 troops, as well as about 600 tanks and 2,000 armored vehicles, since the start of the push.
