After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine received an excellent army - three very strong military districts of the second strategic echelon and three air armies (not counting a powerful arsenal of strategic nuclear forces), with a total number of about 800 thousand people. The troops were equipped with a huge amount of modern military equipment. In terms of the number of tanks (over 6100) and combat aircraft (over 1100), Ukraine ranked 4th in the world after the United States, Russia and China.
How Ukraine lost its Soviet legacy
Now almost everyone has forgotten how many horror stories about a possible war between Russia and Ukraine were in the Russian media in the early 1990s. But in the event of such a war, the Ukrainian army would have a significant superiority over the Russian Armed Forces in the European part of the country: Russia got mainly weak districts of the third echelon with cropped divisions and outdated equipment, as well as groups of troops "hovering" in Eastern Europe, chaotically withdrawn into the clean field.
Even after Washington and Moscow forced Kiev to abandon nuclear weapons, this changed almost nothing: the starting conditions for military construction in Ukraine were simply luxurious, by far the best among all the countries of the former USSR. Especially taking into account the most powerful human resources and highly developed military-industrial complex. Ukraine received at least 700 military-industrial complex enterprises, having the ability to produce almost any equipment. In particular, it turned out to be a monopoly in the post-Soviet space for the production of heavy liquid-propellant intercontinental and space rockets, aircraft carriers, heavy military transport aircraft, and helicopter engines.
Ukraine used two post-Soviet decades, to put it mildly, not in the best way. According to such an important economic indicator as GDP per capita, Ukraine among 15 countries of the former USSR moved from second place in 1992 to ninth in 2011. In terms of the growth of this indicator, it was among them in the last, 15th place. The population of the country during this time has decreased by 7 million people. Military development fits well into the general trend.
Let's not take the hopeless Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Baltic states, which to this day have purely symbolic armed forces. For anything else, they had neither starting conditions nor resources. Moreover, the Baltic states are under the formal protection of NATO (it is just formal, but it creates the illusion of security). All other post-Soviet armies gradually entered the trajectory of progressive development (naturally, each country has its own), some of them managed to create high-quality armies. Only the Armed Forces of Ukraine remained in a state of chaotic degradation, from which all the countries of the former USSR began. As a result, as in the economy, having the best starting conditions in the former country, Ukraine has received the worst result today.
Surplus sale
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have gone through some structural changes. The Carpathian, Odessa and Kiev military districts turned into the Western and Southern operational commands and territorial administration "North". The divisions have turned into brigades, of which there are now 17 (two tank, eight mechanized, one airborne, two airmobile, one missile and three artillery). There are also over 20 regiments, including three special forces regiments.
According to the official data of the CFE Treaty on January 1, 2013, Ukraine had 2311 tanks, 3782 armored combat vehicles, 3101 artillery systems, 507 combat aircraft, 121 attack helicopters. That is, the reductions over 20 years turned out to be very large-scale, 2-3 times. At the same time, these figures are purely formal - at best, half of the equipment listed in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is combat-ready.
Numerous vehicles that have disappeared have either rotted away or sold out. During the post-Soviet period (1992-2012) Ukraine entered the group of the world's leading arms exporters. During this time, 285 tanks and 430 armored personnel carriers were produced at Ukrainian enterprises for export deliveries (there are orders for another 50 tanks and a couple of hundred armored personnel carriers). But from the presence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the same years, 1162 tanks, 1221 armored combat vehicles (BRDM, BMP, armored personnel carriers), 529 artillery systems, 134 combat aircraft, 112 combat helicopters, a significant number of air defense systems were sold abroad.
That is, more than 90% of export successes are not the achievements of the domestic military-industrial complex, but the sale of property. The rapid sale of the Soviet legacy continues even now, its main consumers are the countries of tropical Africa (such as Mali, Ethiopia, DRC). It is believed that Ukraine is selling surplus and obsolete equipment. But there are a lot of these "surpluses", and they are by no means the oldest in comparison with what remains in Ukraine. The most important thing is that the write-off and sale of the Soviet legacy is in no way compensated by new supplies.
Ukrainian tanks and armored personnel carriers are relatively successfully exported, but with their own aircraft it is "neither hot nor cold." The project that emerged in the early 2000s to modernize 400 Soviet T-64 tanks into the T-64BM "Bulat" variant was immediately reduced to 85 units; today 76 machines have actually been modernized. But these are not new, but modernized Soviet tanks. We managed to buy ten new T-84U "Oplot" tanks, ten more advanced BM "Oplot" were ordered, but the Ministry of Defense did not find the money to actually purchase them. At the same time, fifty Oplots will be delivered to Thailand, which has money. BTR-3 and BTR-4 are well sold abroad, the bill goes to hundreds. The Ukrainian Armed Forces themselves ordered only ten BTR-4s, but there was no money for them either. Myanmar and Chad have money for such cars, while Ukraine does not.
Parasitizing on the remains of Soviet technology
True, Ukraine has recently faced very serious problems with the export of armored vehicles. The Malyshev Kharkiv Plant is simply not capable of organizing the mass production of armored vehicles (it does not matter for its own aircraft or for export). Now there is a loud scandalous break in the contract with Iraq for the supply of BTR-4 to this country due to the low quality of the vehicles. The BTR-3 was quietly abandoned by Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates. The main buyers of the new Ukrainian armored vehicles remain Nigeria and Thailand, but with the latter, an even bigger scandal about Oplotov is possible.
The history of the creation of the Sapsan operational-tactical missile system has become a vivid embodiment of the situation in the Ukrainian military-industrial complex. In 2007-2013, more than 200 million hryvnias (about 1 billion rubles) were spent on it. However, during this time not only a prototype was not created, but the documentation was not even developed. As a result, the project had to be closed. In fact, 100% of the money allocated for it (very considerable for the Ukrainian Armed Forces) was simply stolen.
As for artillery systems, air defense systems, combat aircraft and helicopters, today they are neither produced in Ukraine nor purchased abroad. Su-25 attack aircraft and MiG-29 fighters are being modernized, but the pace of modernization is very low, and, most importantly, as in the case of Bulat, this is not the production of new equipment, but a certain extension of the life of the old one.
Ukraine seems to be able to build ships, but the program for the construction of corvettes of project 58250 for "people's money" degenerated into a farce right after its start (although the leadership of the Ukrainian Navy planned to control the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean with these corvettes): instead of 20 ships, the first of them was in 2012 year, the country will receive at best four corvettes, of which the first in 2016. That is, over 20 years of independence, the country's armed forces received 10 new tanks - and nothing else.
However, even this is not the worst thing. It is more striking that all these two decades in the Armed Forces of the country there was practically no combat training. When they nevertheless tried to carry it out from time to time, military missiles hit either residential buildings or passenger planes (with great casualties among the civilian population); as a result, the Ministry of Defense reduced it to zero. The average flight time per pilot in the Ukrainian Air Force in 2012 reached 40 hours, which is considered an outstanding achievement (for comparison, in the Russian Air Force this figure was increased to 120 hours). The exercises of the ground forces are conducted, at best, at the company-battalion level, and even then infrequently. It is impossible to achieve a fundamental improvement in the situation due to the extremely difficult economic situation in the country.
Salvation is in the absence of enemies
On the other hand, it must be admitted that Ukraine, by and large, does not need an army due to the absence of the threat of external aggression.
True, the western neighbors (Hungary and Romania) are now aggressively disposed towards Ukraine: they distribute their passports to its citizens living in the territories that previously belonged to these countries. But this does not have to be done by force: Ukrainian citizens take new passports voluntarily and with pleasure. It is useless to fight such military means.
Of course, one can theoretically imagine how the neighbors will go to war against Ukraine in order to protect their new citizens - but in theory. The Romanians' ability to wage war has long been classified as satire and humor. In addition, the Romanian Armed Forces are also unique in their extremely archaic technology. Until now, all of their 853 tanks are T-55s, all 98 combat aircraft are MiG-21s. A small number of T-72s and MiG-29s, received from the USSR in the late 80s, were quickly and successfully ditched by the Romanians to the point of being completely irrecoverable.
The situation in the Hungarian Armed Forces is not much better: today they have only 150 T-72 tanks (of which 120 are in storage) and only 14 Swedish Grippen fighters. The number of personnel has been reduced to 22 thousand people. Accordingly, it is difficult to expect aggression from Romania and Hungary, the trajectory of development of their Armed Forces is approximately the same as that of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - confidently downward.
It is no less difficult to imagine Turkish aggression against Ukraine. Of course, the Turkish Armed Forces are much stronger than the Ukrainian ones today, but still the Black Sea is a very serious water barrier. In addition, there are no clear goals for such aggression, the problem of the Crimean Tatars for Ankara is not only in the first, but not even in the 20th place in the list of its foreign policy priorities.
As for Russia, Ukraine is not capable of resisting it in all respects. Today, the RF Armed Forces have received a very significant superiority over the Ukrainian Armed Forces in terms of the quantity and quality of equipment and the level of combat training. But the main thing is not even this, but the fact that for a significant part of the population of Ukraine it is Russia that is "their" country. An extremely noticeable part of potential soldiers and even officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the event of a war against Russia will not only immediately surrender, but will directly express their desire to stand under the three-color banner against the "zhovto-blockit".
Thus, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, continuing to absorb significant money from the disastrous state of the Ukrainian budget, do not provide any defense capability to the country. However, she does not need any defenses.
UN peacekeeping operations as a way out
Therefore, in the coming years, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will undergo another reform, consisting in their further significant reduction and sale of a significant part of the remaining equipment and other property. Due to this, the army will be made mercenary, that is, professional.
In Russia, many are still convinced that the presence of a professional army in a country means a higher degree of its development in comparison with a country with a draft army. Based on this postulate, it should be recognized that Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea, Gambia are more developed than Norway, Finland, South Korea, Switzerland.
In fact, the method of manning the Armed Forces is determined by the tasks that face them, and nothing else. In particular, if a country is threatened by large-scale external aggression, it needs a conscript army: the mercenary task of repelling such aggression is incapable of solving - this has been repeatedly confirmed by world experience. On the other hand, a mercenary army is very well suited for solving problems within the country in the interests of the regime that hired it. If the conscript army, that is, the people's army, in the overwhelming majority of cases will not shoot at its own people, then the hired one will easily.
As shown above, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will not be able to fight with Russia in any case; expecting aggression from other directions is foolish. Accordingly, there is no point in maintaining a full-fledged conscript army, for which there is still no money. On the other hand, the specificity of the current Ukrainian regime is such that in the very foreseeable future it may seriously need military protection within the country, from its own population. Accordingly, the regime needs "the love of a liberal" - "a compact professional army." Its main task will be precisely the elimination of the remnants of Ukrainian liberalism.
Thanks to a further radical reduction in the number of personnel and equipment, there will be enough money for its maintenance. Moreover, there is an opportunity to bring it to partial self-sufficiency, using it in the currently very fashionable peacekeeping operations of the UN and NATO in Africa and Asia. The current peacekeeping contingents almost always turn out to be completely incapacitated, since the Western peacekeepers do not want to fight, and the African and Asian ones cannot. The Ukrainians will be the ideal option here. On the one hand, no one pity them, unlike the "real" Europeans, on the other hand, they have a higher level of training than most armies of developing countries (at least African ones).
For such operations, the UN and NATO pay well. Of course, the Ukrainian leadership will take most of this money for itself, but the military will get some of it. At the current level of income, even "something" will be enough for Ukrainians to feel very good. Moreover, representatives of the social base will obviously become "professionals" almost exclusively. At the same time, they will gain experience in fighting civilians and rebel groups, which can then be useful in their own country. In this case, the Chinese army (represented by the Xinjiang Industrial and Construction Corps), which officially received 30 thousand square meters at its disposal for 50 years, could become a good addition to the Ukrainian army. km of the territory of Ukraine.
Russia, of course, cannot afford a "compact professional army" either for geopolitical or domestic political reasons; on the contrary, it is also necessary to increase the current one. Ukraine can serve as an example for her - only not positive, but negative. And this example is truly outstanding. It is very difficult to find in history examples of such a rapid reduction of powerful, high-quality and balanced Armed Forces to such a sad state.
