By Anatoly Vasserman
The new US special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation that ‘Washington is actively considering the possibility of supplying weapons’ to the Ukrainian authorities to fight ‘pro-Russian insurgents in the east of the country’.
According to Volker, ‘a defensive weapon that will allow Ukraine to defend itself, in particular, to hit the tanks, can really help’.
In addition, the US special envoy added that such a measure should not be viewed as a challenge or provocation of Russia - on the contrary, it ‘could change Russia's attitude’ to the Ukrainian events.
Obviously, it is about epic «javelins» whose arrival the Kiev authorities are publicly and with hopes waiting for when they cease to waver with anxiety to join the EU and NATO.
As far as I can judge, in purely military terms, deliveries of anti-tank weapons to Kiev terrorists are unlikely to seriously change anything. Simply because the Donbass militiamen do not have many tanks, and they are not used as a real offensive weapon but, in fact, as relatively mobile artillery.
By the way, the Kiev terrorists themselves also use tanks not for a real offensive, but exclusively as firing points. From these tanks, they actively shell civilians and life support facilities of Donbass, but they do not go on offensive.
They do not go on offensive, first of all, because of the fact that there have been countless anti-tank weapons in Ukraine since the Soviet times.
And, as far as I know the tactical and technical characteristics of this weapon of the USSR times, it is quite effective to defeat the Soviet tanks, which both sides of the terrorist operation in Donbass are armed with (as it is well known, this operation is called antiterrorist in Kiev, and to some extent, this name can be accepted as the Donbass militiamen are really fighting against the Kiev terrorists and quite successfully at that).
So, if it were about purely military matters, then both sides would have enough of the already available anti-tank weapons. The point here, in fact, is precisely to impose on everyone who interferes in this civil war to some extent, the Kiev interpretation of it.
To declare that it is the war of the noble knights inheriting the traditions of the Zaporozhye Sich, against the evil Muscovites invading Ukraine with some invisible but crushing military equipment.
Mr. Volcker, obviously, wanted to show by his statements that he agrees with this interpretation (As a man somewhat familiar with the history of my small homeland, I should note that in historical reality, the Zaporozhye Cossacks successfully combined the functions of border guards and robbers from a large Black Sea road).
But this is not the point. The main point is that Volker demonstrated his readiness to share the Kiev concept of what is happening.
In purely military terms, this hypothetical supply will change absolutely nothing, and even if the Kiev troops were armed with miraculous anti-tank missiles indeed, these same missiles would be as effective in their hands as conventional spears («javelin», in fact, means «spear»).
It is worth remembering that the supply of several types of weapons from America to Kiev has already proved to be ineffective, to put it mildly. In particular, radars for the counter-battery artillery shelling have suffered a fate comparable to the fate of two steel balls given, in an anecdote, to a sailor in a locked cell: one he managed to break, and lost the other.
In the case of the radars, the first one was disabled by «skillful handling» in a matter of minutes, and so thoroughly that it was considered impossible to repair it. Another came as a trophy to the Donbass antiterrorist militia.
So, this experience suggests that missiles will prove ineffective, even if the Americans actually deliver them. But I suspect that they are most unlikely not deliver it because the supply of weapons to a war zone is a highly seductive business. After all, it is impossible to account for what part of the weapons has actually come on the battlefield, and what was lost in a warehouse.
I believe that commercially, this supply would be much more successful than in the military meaning.
But still, we can not relax because from a purely propagandist point of view, such a delivery would mean another round of American support for the most outspoken terrorists and scumbags from the very large number of terrorist and crazy clients of the United States.
Moreover, this delivery would then be used as a justification for further support of this criminal grouping on the principle of ‘we protect our investments’.
Therefore, I deeply hope that our political leadership will find some new ways to show all concerned American individuals that they had better stop their losses now, while they are not too large.