Following Ukraine’s receipt of Javelin anti-tank missiles earlier this week, Sputnik Radio’s Loud & Clear spoke with Mark Sleboda, an international affairs and security analyst, to discuss the implications for Ukraine’s military.
“This weapon system, while it is one of the world’s better anti-tank systems, is not going to change the military balance in Ukraine,” Sleboda told Loud & Clear hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker.
”We’re talking 37 launchers and 210 missiles. Tanks haven’t been used in this conflict in three years. The majority of deaths are due to sniper fire and artillery. This is not going to change the military balance,” the analyst said, speaking on the tensions between the central government in Kiev and Russian-speaking authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics in the Donbass River basin in the country’s far east.
“As [Barack] Obama noted when he was US president and declined to send lethal aid, the Russian government always has escalatory dominance over Ukraine — it means far more to them, it’s far closer to them and they will respond in some perhaps asymmetrical way to increase the capacity of the East Ukrainians to be able to resist the US-backed putsch regime that has been occupying Kiev since 2014,” Sleboda explained.
The US’ Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which facilitates foreign arms sales for the Pentagon in concert with the State Department, largely agreed with Sleboda’s analysis that the Javelins won’t seriously alter the regional security situation.
The $47 million sale of Javelin launchers and missiles “will not alter the basic military balance in the region,” the DSCA said in a March news release.
John Deni, a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, and former political adviser to the United States Army, wrote in December that to avoid escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington, “the United States ought to lead NATO in admitting it made a mistake when it prematurely declared in 2008 that Ukraine (and Georgia) would become members of the alliance.”
Sourse: sputniknews.com
