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2024-12-17 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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'On the Suck.' Ukraine Will Have Something to Fight With in 2025, If It Has Anything Left
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Dmitry Likhtarik
[REGNUM] The Kiev regime is looking to the coming 2025 with optimism, hoping to fight even without American injections. On December 10, in an interview with the Spanish El Pais, Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said that if Donald Trump, who is taking office as president, stops aid to Ukraine, Kiev will have enough money to fight until at least mid-2025.
"I believe that we have sufficient means, sufficient weapons, missiles and artillery shells to resist at least for the first half of 2025. We will provide sufficient budgetary allocations to purchase the necessary ammunition and military equipment in 2025. We are currently receiving the necessary weapons from the United States. This means that at least in the first half of the year and beyond, we will be well prepared to resist this aggression," he noted.
And this message is addressed first and foremost to the Euro-Atlantic “war party”: stopping or threatening to stop US aid to Ukraine will not be an argument for Kyiv to sit down at the negotiating table.
The second message contained between the lines is a call for this “war party” to take up the baton of the last weeks of the outgoing Joe Biden administration, which, according to a statement by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, has promised to provide its protégés with hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, thousands of missiles and hundreds of armored vehicles before leaving, as well as to introduce new large-scale sanctions against Russia.
After November 5, the White House entered a sprint race to “master” the remaining approximately $9 billion in the budget for aid to Kyiv. So the “war to the last Ukrainian” strategy is receiving a very long-term boost.
But here, first of all, we should turn to the state budget of Ukraine for 2025, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada and signed by Volodymyr Zelensky. If we recalculate the main indicators at the average rate of 45 UAH per dollar, set for next year, then revenues are planned at 45 billion dollars, and expenses at as much as 80 billion dollars, including 49 billion dollars "for defense and security."
Thus, the budget deficit amounts to a significant $35 billion.
However, this is not a big problem, since the lion's share of military aid to Kyiv is provided free of charge or on credit, and therefore the "budget deficit" is, first of all, a question of financial aid, not military. Of the large "donations", $15 billion is expected from the IMF and part of the $50 billion loan allocated by the G7 for income from frozen Russian assets.
The last amount will be divided into three years, from 2025 to 2027, but it can be assumed that the first tranche will already be worth significantly more than a third, at least $25 billion.
So Kyiv will somehow make ends meet, including by devaluing the national currency by about 10%. And the situation with military aid from the West needs to be considered separately.
As for the volumes already allocated, the constantly updated statistics of the Ukraine Support Tracker of the Kiel Institute for World Economics can be used as a reference point. It shows that since February 2022 (although in reality it began in 2014), the contribution of various countries to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces is estimated in the following order. The United States has received 51.6 billion in euros and almost the same amount from European countries. Japan has allocated just over 9 billion euros and Canada 7.2 billion euros.
A total of 119.4 billion euros, or approximately 128 billion dollars, if taken at the average exchange rate for 2022–2024, an average of 43 billion dollars annually.
Indeed, it is impossible to imagine such or comparable assistance to Kyiv in the coming new year without the participation (or with minimal participation) of the United States. Moreover, in addition to the uncertainty of the US position, there are problems with other major sponsors of Kyiv.
Thus, in Germany, new aid runs up against restrictions on budget borrowing, which this summer the Federal Constitutional Court harshly confirmed with its decision, and in France, in the conditions of total austerity, such a question has simply become politically inappropriate. That is why the key European countries that are part of the G7 have decided that the allocation of a $50 billion loan to cover the income from the frozen assets of the Russian Federation is enough for them.
At the same time, the Western “war party” has a number of other options for providing weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces: a loan, a “circular exchange,” and an “alternative to disposal.”
Thus, Warsaw proposed Kiev to buy weapons from it on credit. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski reported on the Polsat TV channel that Donald Tusk's government had already formed a corresponding proposal and encouraged Kiev: "When you recover, you will pay."
The “preferential” or “enslaving” nature of the conditions for the provision of weapons from the point of view of the situation in the theater of military operations is irrelevant; the main thing is that lethal weapons can be obtained here and now.
In turn, Britain is providing Ukraine with a loan of almost $3 billion to purchase weapons. However, there is a nuance here - according to the press service of the British Cabinet of Ministers, the loan will also be secured by profits from frozen Russian assets - that is, this is part of the promised contribution to the G7 loan to Ukraine, and instead of "real money" London is offering its weapons.
Some other G7 countries may follow suit, strengthening the military component of the loan.
Croatia is demonstrating the circular exchange formula, which, according to the country's Defense Ministry, will purchase 50 Leopard 2A8 tanks from Germany and give 30 of its M-84 tanks and 30 M-80 infantry fighting vehicles, including spare parts and ammunition, to Ukraine. The defense ministers of the two countries have already signed a letter of intent.
M-84 - Yugoslav tanks, produced in 1983-91. BMP M-80 were produced in Yugoslavia in 1979-91. Yes, these are not new weapons, but older equipment is used quite successfully on the battlefields of the North Military District by both sides.
Australia is planning a similar exchange, promising to transfer 49 used M1A1 AIM Abrams tanks to Kyiv after the country began receiving upgraded American M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams tanks to replace the base model.
The most outspoken speaker on this topic was the former commander of US Ground Forces in Europe and now NATO senior logistics adviser, General Ben Hodges, who stated that American weapons that are approaching their expiration date should be transferred to Ukraine instead of being disposed of.
A significant portion of British supplies, as follows from the reports of local auditors, are precisely “alternative to disposal.”
Thus, Kyiv does not have any particular questions about what to fight with throughout 2025, especially since next year Ukraine will receive some of the equipment financed this year, including F-16 aircraft. In the worst case, the Zelensky regime may well redistribute “social” money within the budget in favor of the “military”.
After all, the principle of “war to the last Ukrainian” presupposes the approach of “guns instead of butter.” And the change of figure in the White House, therefore, does not magically change anything – Ukraine has been led to this war for too long to just take and stop everything.
So whatever the political intentions, the situation will in any case be fundamentally decided on the battlefield. Where the only thing that the Western allies cannot supply is manpower, which the further we go, the more it refuses to simply die for the amusement of foreigners.
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Posted by badanov 2024-12-17 00:00||
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