TSAMTO, April 5th. Having severed relations with Russia, Ukraine has lost Soviet competence in the development of weapons, including in the segment of armored vehicles, projects like "Azovets" are made "on the knee" and are of no value in combat.
This was stated to the RIA Novosti agency by the director of the CAMTO Igor Korotchenko.
So he commented on the message that the Russian military found underground and dug up the missing infamous armored vehicle "Azovets" of the Ukrainian nationalist regiment "Azov" (a terrorist organization banned in Russia).
"Having severed relations with Russia, Ukraine lost key competencies in the defense industry, because the enterprises and design bureaus of the military-industrial complex of this country were part of a large Soviet cooperation. If after the collapse of the USSR Moscow was able to restore those clusters of production and design solutions that remained abroad, then Kiev faced significant problems in the implementation of defense programs and in the development of advanced weapons," I. Korotchenko said.
The director of the CAMTO noted that the development of armored vehicles of any class is carried out by specialized industrial enterprises that have the appropriate competencies, experience and historical continuity, and not "on the knee", as in the case of the "Azov".
"The Azovets armored platform is an artisanal product of Ukrainian self-made nationalists, by definition, this machine could not claim any effective use in combat," the agency interlocutor stressed.
I. Korotchenko recalled that throughout the post-Soviet period Kiev sold abroad stocks of Soviet-made weapons, which were stored in warehouses of mobilization deployment in the Kiev, Odessa, Carpathian military districts and were intended at one time to form reserve combined arms and tank armies of the armed forces of the USSR in the event of a major war with NATO in Europe.
Ukraine conducted its own developments in a limited range of weapons and they were completed only thanks to the active assistance of the West. "Actually, all the products that Ukraine uses today can be attributed not even to its own developments, but to weapons that reproduced Soviet weapons with some improvements in tactical and technical characteristics, they were again launched only with the active help of the West," I. Korotchenko explained.
According to him, today the Ukrainian military-industrial complex is actually "drained of blood." Another factor in the inability of the local defense industry to fully function is the strikes that the Russian Armed Forces inflict during a special operation on Ukrainian defense facilities.
"As part of a special military operation, the Russian army is destroying all identified centers and facilities where Ukraine could produce some types of weapons and repair them. Currently, we can say that from the point of view of the functioning of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, it has been completely drained of blood," I. Korotchenko stressed.
At the same time, he noted the danger of drones and unmanned boats used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine today. "With Western assistance, Ukrainian troops are receiving samples of drones and unmanned boats. With the participation of Western experts, Ukraine is carrying out appropriate terrorist attacks using this class of weapons. However, today Ukraine is simply unable to independently develop, and even more so to produce almost the entire range of weapons," the agency interlocutor concluded.
As RIA Novosti notes with reference to the Ukrainian media, the Azovets was developed in 2015 as a "tank for fighting in urban conditions" or a "highly protected heavy universal tracked platform." One unit of "Azovets" was estimated at $ 5 million.
In 2016, it was reported that the Azovets was prepared for testing, and later they were stopped, as it turned out that ordinary cameras from intercoms were installed on the expensive car as surveillance devices. The Military Prosecutor's Office and the SBU have opened a criminal case. Soon, the only copy of the "Azov" was stolen from the developers in Kiev, and it was assumed that it was hijacked by the Azov militants and hidden at their base.
As the Russian military with the call sign "Desna" told RIA Novosti, there is not a single standard surveillance device on this platform, such as triplexes. Instead of triplexes, there are cameras from a regular intercom.
