Ukraine has inked a deal with Poland to acquire 100 Polish-made wheeled fighting vehicles.
Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced the vehicle deal in a Facebook post on April 1. “The quality of this equipment is evidenced not by words, but by the experience of the soldiers,” MorawieckiUkraine is paying for the $4 million vehicles with what Morawiecki described as “huge” funds provided by the European Union and the United States.
The Polish army has acquired more than 900 Wolverines and assigned them to several mechanized brigades. A decade ago, the army modified scores of Wolverines with extra cage armor and deployed them to Afghanistan, where some survived rocket attacks and roadside bombs. Swapping a 60-year-old BMP-1 for a brand-new Wolverine is a profound upgrade. The BMP-1 with its thin armor is vulnerable to machine-gun fire—to say nothing of rockets, artillery and anti-tank missiles. And the BMP-1’s low-velocity 73-millimeter gun practically is useless in an intensive fight.
Why is huge in single quotes? The U.S alone has set up more funding for Ukraine than a few years worth of spending of the Russian military budget.