The New York Times reported Monday that the US and its Western allies have shipped weapons to Ukraine that were broken and needed repair or were only useful for spare parts.
The report also said that Ukraine has not received weapons from contractors that it has paid for. As of the end of 2022, the Ukrainian government paid over $800 million for arms contracts that were completely or partly unfulfilled.
Sources told the Times that some of the unfulfilled weapons had been delivered or refunds were issued but said hundreds of millions of dollars were paid for weapons that never materialized. The report said the most valuable undelivered contracts were between the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and state-owned Ukrainian arms companies.
Ukraine has also had issues with contractors in other countries. According to Ukrainian government documents, Kyiv paid $19.8 million to the Ultra Defense Corporation, an American arms dealer based in Tampa, to repair 33 damaged howitzers provided by the Italian government.
The documents said that 13 of the howitzers were shipped to Ukraine but arrived not suitable for combat missions, although the CEO of Ultra Defense Corporation claimed each howitzer worked when they were delivered and blamed the Ukrainians for not maintaining them. Kyiv complained about the issue to the Pentagon’s inspector general, who is investigating the matter.
There are also multiple examples of military equipment being pulled from US military stockpiles that were not in good condition. A US Army unit based in Kuwait was ordered to send 29 Humvees to Ukraine, and the unit’s leader claimed all but one of the Humvees was ready for combat. But a Pentagon report said 26 were in need of repair.
After the Humvees were repaired, they were sent to Poland to be staged for Ukraine. But in Poland, it was discovered that 25 of the Humvees needed new tires. A Pentagon report said that finding replacement tires “delayed the shipment of other equipment to Ukraine and required significant labor and time.”
Besides the issues with damaged equipment, a recent Pentagon inspector general report found that US military personnel were not properly tracking arms arriving in Poland to be shipped to Ukraine.
