“"Vast stocks of conventional munitions and military supplies have accumulated in Ukraine,” Obama said in an August 30, 2005 statement from Donetsk...“We need to eliminate these stockpiles for the safety of the Ukrainian people and people around world, by keeping them out of conflicts around the world."” [Who is “we?”]
[Image: Aug. 2005, Senators Lugar and Obama observe weapons in eastern Ukraine, Reuters]
3/5/2014, “Flashback: Senator Obama pushed bill that helped destroy more than 15,000 TONS of ammunition, 400,000 small arms and 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine,” UK Daily Mail, David Martosko
*Obama traveled to Ukraine with Sen. Dick Lugar in 2005 just seven months after he became a senator, touring surplus weapons stockpiles
*Most of the small arms and ammunition were left over when Soviets withdrew from Eastern bloc nations, and later dumped in Ukraine
*The two senators secured U.S. funding to help destroy the weapons instead of leaving them intact
*Ukraine exported more than 700,000 small arms in 2004-2007, including 101,000 each to Libya and the UK, and 260,000 to the U.S.
*But most of the ammunition stockpiles-crucial for keeping a standing army battle-ready-were destroyed”
“As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama won $48 million in federal funding to help Ukraine destroy thousands of tons of guns and ammunition – weapons which are now unavailable to the Ukrainian army….
In August 2005, just seven months after his swearing-in, Obama traveled to Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine with then-Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar, touring a conventional weapons site.
The two met in Kiev with President Victor Yushchenko, making the case that an existing Cooperative Threat Reduction Program covering the destruction of nuclear weapons should be expanded to include artillery, small arms, anti-aircraft weapons, and conventional ammunition of all kinds.
After a stopover in London, the senators returned to Washington and declared that the U.S. [taxpayers] should devote funds to speed up the destruction of more than 400,000 small arms, 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles, and more than 15,000 tons of ammunition.
Then-Senator Barack Obama inspected decommissioned artillery shells in a warehouse in Donetsk, Ukraine, and argued that Congress should allocate money to speed up the destruction of thousands of tons more.
Obama, then a junior senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, worked with then-Republican committee chair Dick Lugar (L) to oversee destruction of Soviet-era war materiel through an agreement that Lugar had brokered years earlier, covering only nuclear weapons.
Photographs from the trip show Obama inspecting a plant where Soviet-era artillery shells and shoulder-fired missiles were collecting dust, leftovers dumped in Ukraine after the USSR withdrew from Eastern bloc nations after the once-mighty communist nation fell apart.
The United Nations had already identified some 7 million small arms and light weapons, and 2 million tons of conventional ammunition, warehoused in more than 80 weapons depots spread across [Ukraine] the country....
Two experts said the ammunition, particularly small-arms rounds, would have been useful to train Ukraine’s armed forces and million-strong reserves.
‘Vast stocks of conventional munitions and military supplies have accumulated in Ukraine,’ Obama said in an August 30, 2005 statement from Donetsk. ‘Some of this stockpile dates from World War I and II, yet most dates from Cold War buildup and the stocks left behind by Soviet withdrawals from East Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungry and Poland.’
‘We need to eliminate these stockpiles for the safety of the Ukrainian people and people around world, by keeping them out of conflicts around the world.’
[Who is “we?”]
More than a year later, President George W. Bush signed into law a proposal authored by Obama and Lugar….
“In 2006 Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko (L) warmly received Lugar and Obama in Kiev”
Obama became president in 2008, and now faces a crisis in the nation he once sought to disarm.
Obama said then that the existing Cooperative Threat Reduction Program ‘has effectively disposed of thousands of weapons of mass destruction, but we must do far more to keep deadly conventional weapons like anti-aircraft missiles out of the hands of terrorists.’
Much of the Ukrainian small-arms supply was ultimately exported, not scrapped, by a Yushchenko regime that chose revenue from arms dealing over the cost of melting down metal.
In 2008 the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that between 2004 and 2007, the Ukrainian Export Control Service told the UN that it sent 721,777 small arms and light weapons to 27 different countries.
The United States was the top recipient, with more than 260,000 of those weapons, followed by the UK and Libya, which each imported more than 101,000.
That flood of weapons exports has continued, with annual export records showing hundreds of thousands of new exports each year, covering everything from pistols and carbine rifles to heavy machine guns and anti-tank weapons.
(Obama presented Lugar with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2013)…
Some of that was Ukraine’s own doing-it sold 320 tanks to Pakistan in the 1990s, for instance – but Obama and Lugar accelerated the pace of the country’s arms liquidation.”…
…………………………………………..
Added: Ukraine has made only one tank in past ten years for its own military as of Nov. 2019:
11/6/19, “‘One tank in 10 years?’: Zelensky outraged during visit to UkrOboronProm factory," Kiev Post, Alexander Query
“President Volodymyr Zelensky was fuming after visiting the Malyshev military plant in Kharkiv on Nov. 6.
The plant has been part of UkrOboronProm, the state defense sector monopoly, since January 2011. UkrOboronProm oversees about 130 companies with 80,000 employees, who make everything from tanks and planes to missiles-both for Ukraine and foreign clients.
Covered in a thick shroud of official state secrecy, the monopoly has long been plagued by corruption scandals. But the Nov. 6 visit was Zelensky’s first trip to a factory of UkrOboronProm, which he promised to clean up during his campaign.
Zelensky said he was shocked when he learned that the Malyshev plant had made only one tank for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 10 years. “The statistics show that, in Soviet times, there were 900 tanks a year,” he said at a meeting about the state of the Malyshev factory.
Zelensky pointed out that some workers had not received wage arrears for up to four years. He also noted the low level of wages in general.
“For example, at the aviation plant, only Hr 3,500 ($142). How can a person respect himself and work for the state? How can he even call himself a person in these conditions?” Zelensky said, referring to reports that workers are forced to work in freezing facilities during the winter.
“We treat people like cattle, and then we want them to respect the authorities, respect Ukraine, not to go anywhere, and for our businesses to work,” he added.
Zelensky demanded that the Cabinet of Ministers convene a meeting to improve the efficiency and working conditions at UkrOboronProm.
Last June, Zelensky named reformist former Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius to the board of the enterprise, tasking him with carrying out a long-awaited audit.
Asked by Zelensky on Nov. 6 when it would be possible to fix all the plants in Kharkiv, where there are 18 UkroOboroProm enterprises, Abromavicius said it would require money and state support. Zelensky asked to meet again within a week for further discussions.
Created in 2010 by then-President Viktor Yanukovych, UkrOboronProm has a monopoly over exports of all military products, making it both a regulator and the only game in town. Over the last decade, UkrOboronProm has rigged deals, pushed entrepreneurs away and kept [chump] Western investors out of the loop.
In 2017, an investigation revealed that as much as Hr 100 million ($3.7 million) allocated to buy spare parts for armored military vehicles was pilfered from Kyiv’s Armory plant in 2014 -2015, and the parts were never delivered.
In late July [2019], John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, called UkrOboronProm a “serious, serious problem” for the country and said that the whole military industry is suffering from a “lack of transparency and corruption.”
For Ukraine, developing a transparent defense industry could open the door for foreign investment, economic development and closer NATO integration.”
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