Month: April 2024

It’s not just US and Western defense contractors and arms makers that have been raking in the billions as a result of Washington’s mammoth defense aid handed over to Ukraine, but Ukrainian defense companies are also enjoying the largesse at US taxpayers’ expense.

“A total of $1.6 billion of the recent US aid to Ukraine would go to the purchase of Ukraine-made weapons, said a senior Kyiv official,” Defense Post reports of the $61 billion in US aid just approved.

Russia will soon showcase a parade of NATO vehicles captured from the battlefield in Ukraine. Or rather, we might say that Putin is about to show off his ‘trophy vehicles’.

A month-long exhibit displaying the Western military equipment will run starting May 1st at Moscow’s Victory Park, and which will be featured alongside the capital’s annual Red Square Victory Day Parade on May 9 which commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

The display will feature an array of armored fighting vehicles, including an American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, a Swedish CV90 and a French-made AMX-10RC.

It will also include destroyed American tanks, per state media:

For the first time Russian troops have hauled a disabled US-made M1 Abrams tank away from the front line of the Ukraine conflict, the beginning of a journey that will eventually see the vehicle displayed at a trophy show in Moscow, officials have said.

German-made Leopard main battle tanks are also being transferred to the Russian capital to be put on display.

Russia’s defense ministry has listed that it additionally has examples of military equipment made in Australia, Austria, France, Finland, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden and South Africa – as cited in Newsweek.

Russian media sources have already begun releasing images and footage of the vehicles being staged ahead of the official event kick-off.

According to reports, some of the vehicles will even display American and British flags, highlighting that they were captured on the frontlines in Ukraine, in what appears to also be a PR effort to embarrass the Western military alliance.

Last year the Russian military released several videos and images of burning French-supplied main battle tanks from the Ukrainian battlefield. At that time Russian officials began to talk of taking “our trophies” – that is, captured and/or destroyed Western equipment that had previously been supplied to Kiev.