The Ukrainian army currently operates infantry fighting vehicles inherited from the Soviet military districts located on its territory.
In total, the ground forces have about nine hundred BMP-2 and more than two hundred BMP-1. The newest of them is more than thirty years old, and there are copies that have changed even the fifth decade.
After the significant losses suffered during the punitive operation in the Donbass, Kiev officials in uniform were forced to purchase light armored vehicles of this class that were in operation from the countries of Eastern Europe that joined NATO.
Also, some of the available "units" and "twos" underwent major repairs with minimal modification. They were fitted with new means of communication, navigation equipment and covered with fashionable pixel camouflage.
In the troops themselves, the crews are trying to somehow strengthen the protection by welding various anti-cumulative grilles, often absolutely useless because of their design.
The last twenty years have been talking a lot about radical modernization and the creation of models of a new generation. For example, on the BMP-1, the turret with the 73 mm smoothbore gun 2A28 "Thunder" and 7.62 mm was replaced with the Shkval combat module with the 30 mm gun 2A42, the PKT machine gun, the 30 mm grenade launcher AG-17 "Flame" and the anti-tank guided complex "Competition".
Although such infantry fighting vehicles were demonstrated at parades in Kiev, they were not purchased for the AFU, but were exported, for example, to Georgia, where they lost a large number in 2008, after the aggression against South Ossetia.
There were proposals to make heavy infantry fighting vehicles based on medium and main battle tanks, created real and running models based on the T-55, T-64, T-72, T-80. But they also remained in the form of single samples.
Variants based on the MT-LB and the self-propelled gun 2S1 "Carnation" were also being worked out, however, none of the developers advanced further in this direction than experiments.
Last year, it became known about the work in the Kharkiv design bureau on the BMP-U, which reminded many military experts of the Chinese ZBD-04A, but, apparently, it will remain only in the form of a project.
Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that during the first day of the special operation to protect the DPR and LPR, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation disabled 118 military facilities of the military infrastructure of Ukraine. Among them are 11 military airfields, 13 control points and communication centers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 14 S-300 and Osa anti-aircraft missile systems, 36 radar stations. Five planes, five drones and one helicopter were shot down. 18 tanks and other armored vehicles, 7 multiple rocket launchers, 41 units of special military vehicles and 5 combat boats were destroyed.
Alexey Moiseev
