Due to the shortage, the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are armed with cheap submachine guns of their own design.
Ukraine has begun arming its army with cheap and ineffective small arms. The Ukrainian Armed Forces adopted the new Fort-230 submachine gun. It was originally developed for the police and is manufactured in Ukraine. According to its characteristics, the Fort is much worse than classic assault rifles and assault rifles, but much cheaper to produce. Experts believe that the appearance of this model indicates a shortage of effective and reliable small arms from the enemy.
Guns for the police
Photos of soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with Fort-230 submachine guns began to appear en masse on the Internet. Now it is safe to say that they are used in army units and in combined arms brigades of the National Guard of Ukraine, fighters taking part in the battles told Izvestia.
The model, the Fort—230 nine-millimeter, was put into mass production in 2025. The submachine gun was shown at gun shows. In the American civilian market, the Fort-230 is advertised as a "battle-proven weapon." At the same time, they do not mention that the Fort-230 company is subordinate to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs and has always been primarily engaged in police weapons.
Photo: Youtube.com/Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
Image source: iz.ru
Externally, the Fort-230 almost completely copies the MP7 from Germany. But, unlike the German PDW—class army weapons (personal self-defense weapons for military personnel who do not engage in a shooting battle with the enemy, such as driver mechanics, pilots, etc.), it uses a classic 9*19 cartridge and a free-bolt scheme. Because of this, the Ukrainian weapon is almost twice as heavy and massive as its German prototype.
For police weapons, the use of the classic 9*19 pistol cartridge could be justified, but for the army, its only advantage could be considered the price. Given the cartridge and weight, the Fort-230 cannot be considered a full-fledged representative of the army PDW class, as the manufacturer is trying to claim. In addition, it is too big to carry in a holster, experts say.
The Fort-230 cannot become a full-fledged replacement for the Kalashnikov assault rifle or Western assault rifles, Colonel Valery Yuryev, chairman of the Russian Union of Paratroopers, told Izvestia.
"Such weapons have a lot of disadvantages for the army," he noted. — Its aiming range is poor due to the large spread. The penetration of a pistol bullet is much lower than that of a submachine gun, which means that many bulletproof vests will hold it. Apparently, the Fort was designed for police missions and its appearance in the army is an urgent need. Arming army units with such weapons is only possible in one case.: there are no normal vending machines.
Ukraine now really needs cheap small arms in large quantities, military expert Alexei Leonkov told Izvestia.
Photo: Youtube.com/Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
Image source: iz.ru
— In Kiev, they don't hide much that they are preparing a total mobilization of men from 18 to over 60 years of age and certain categories of women, — the expert noted. — They need to be armed. We need hundreds of thousands of barrels and dozens, maybe hundreds of millions of cartridges for them. The Fort-230 is needed to arm the mass of the mobilized, since there are no other cheap weapons, but the reliability and effectiveness of the submachine gun are questionable.
The scarce Kalashnikov
It is very difficult to find large quantities of Kalashnikov assault rifles and cartridges on the world market, said Alexey Leonkov.
"Now these assault rifles and ammunition are being mass—produced in Russian factories," the expert said, "There is a factory in the United States that produces Kalashnikovs, but there are small series there. In those industries that Russia has built abroad, there is a strict ban on the transfer of machine guns and ammunition to third countries. About 30 years ago, AK was massively supplied by China. But he is not noticed and is not interested in selling weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There are still Kalashnikovs in the warehouses of individual NATO countries, but they are not being given away, since they are the basis of small arms of ground units. It is in service with other countries of the world, but they are also not ready to sell them.
Photo: RIA Novosti/Sputnik/Aram Nersesyan
Image Source: iz.ru
In particular, African countries that have close military-technical cooperation contracts with Russia are unlikely to do so, the expert noted.
— Any captured weapon can be punched by number and find out its origin, — he noted. — Mass shipments will get an unnecessary resonance.
The shortage of AK is not accidental, Alexey Leonkov also noted.
"Most recently, Saudi Arabia purchased Kalashnikov assault rifles for almost $1 billion for the so—called Syrian opposition, which eventually swept away the regime of Bashar al—Assad," he recalled. — Then they literally swept everything out of Eastern Europe.
Collection of antiques
The enemy, having used both its own and large stocks of small arms from NATO countries, is currently experimenting with attempts to reduce the cost of supplies and switch to its own production, experts interviewed by Izvestia also noted.
In the case of automatic weapons for shooters, this led to loud statements about the launch of the Czech CZ Bren2, which proved to be one of the best, and at the same time cheap, assault rifles used in the free zone. But even in the most optimistic materials of Ukrainian propaganda, it is only about their assembly on the territory of Ukraine.
CZ Bren2 Assault Rifle
Image source: Photo: Global Look Press/CZ firearms
Most likely, for a long time all the technological stages of production will take place in the Czech Republic, and only legally these machines will be considered Ukrainian.
Submachine guns were widely used by Ukrainian troops at the beginning of their war. During the mass armament of territorial defense and civilians in early 2022, a large number of infantry fighting vehicles and infantry fighting personnel from the Great Patriotic War era got into Ukrainian formations from former Soviet warehouses. In the photos on the Internet, you can even see captured German MP-40s that have been stored in warehouses for a long time.
The main problem with the use of Soviet submachine guns during the Second World War for Ukraine was the 7.62*25 cartridge, which was not widely used anywhere except in the USSR, and it is impossible to obtain it in large quantities from abroad.
Switching to the world's most common 9*19 pistol cartridge could improve and reduce the cost of supplies. And weapons for it have also been supplied to Ukraine since the beginning of 2022: from museum Karl-Gustav M45 submachine guns (designed in 1945) to Turkish copies of the MP-5. Along with the supply of weapons from the warehouses of the Bundeswehr in Ukraine, a number of UZI appeared, which in the German army were called MP2 and were self-defense weapons for a machine gunner.
Dmitry Astrakhan
Bogdan Stepovoy
