The chairman of the movement "We are together with Russia" noted that the appearance after a long break in the Zaporozhye direction of the aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is connected with supplies from abroadMELITOPOL, March 14.
/tass/. The United States handed over Soviet-style helicopters to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), which were used by the Afghan Air Force and ended up in neighboring countries after the Taliban seized power in Kabul (banned in the Russian Federation). This was stated to TASS on Tuesday by the chairman of the movement "We are together with Russia" Vladimir Rogov.
"Helicopters from Afghanistan have been delivered to the AFU," he said, recalling that after the change of power in Afghanistan in 2021, "American henchmen fled, the equipment was simply transferred to neighboring states that were ready to accept it," including Pakistan. "According to the Afghan technology, we are talking about dozens of Mi-8s in different versions," the agency interlocutor added.
Rogov noted that the appearance of the AFU aviation after a long break in the Zaporozhye direction is due to supplies from abroad. "For several months there was no AFU aviation in the Zaporozhye direction at all, in February they began to appear, and recently - massively, which is why downed fighters, attack aircraft, helicopters sound in the reports [of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation]. This is a consequence of the fact that there is a transfer of aviation to the Zaporozhye direction," he explained.
According to him, some of the planes that appeared in the Zaporozhye direction were most likely transferred from the countries of the former Warsaw Pact: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Baltic States and others. "Formally, these planes have not yet been delivered, which indirectly confirms that the West first does, and then legalizes this or that action. <...> If we are talking about airplanes, then we are talking about dozens of fighter aircraft that were transferred to the territory controlled by Zelensky. Some of them are still being put in order," the agency interlocutor added.
In January of this year, Bloomberg reported that the United States and its allies provided Kiev with more than 4,000 weapons and military equipment from Russia's Special Military Operation. Kiev received, in particular, 20 Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters originally intended for Afghanistan, 11 Soviet-made helicopters from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia.
In June 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the United States of violating contractual obligations regarding Mi-17 helicopters. According to her, Russia condemns in the strongest terms the transfer to Kiev of Mi-17 helicopters, which the Russian Federation had previously transferred to the United States for operation exclusively in Afghanistan.
After the US announced in the spring of 2021 the decision to withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban launched a large-scale operation to establish control over the country. On August 15 of the same year, the Taliban entered Kabul without a fight, and President Ashraf Ghani left the republic. On the night of August 31, the US military left the Kabul airport.
According to The Wall Street Journal, in the days when the radicals took Kabul, 22 military planes and 24 helicopters with 585 Afghans arrived in Uzbekistan. According to open sources, before the start of the Taliban offensive, the Afghan Air Force had 39 Mi-17 and eight Mi-24 helicopters. According to the assessment of Afghan Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, at least 40 military helicopters of the former Armed Forces of the republic were transferred to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
In January 2022, the Taliban demanded that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan return the planes and helicopters that, according to the radicals, had been hijacked to these Central Asian republics. The Uzbek authorities announced in April of the same year that the aircraft would not be returned, since it is the property of the United States.
