Olivier Dupuis: Military Aid to Ukraine: Belgian Cavalry Turns Up Late

2022-10-04 | Weapon delivery

Olivier Dupuis op-ed for the Kyiv Post. Belgium has decided on a new military aid package for Ukraine worth 12 million euros.  It includes heavy machine guns and ammunition, as well as non-lethal equipment such as helmets, winter clothing and vision equipment. Ambulances and medical evacuation trucks are also expected to be delivered… in early 2023. 

It is good news, but also not much. Not much when one considers the military aid provided by Belgium over the past seven months and the extent of the Ukrainians’ needs. Indeed, it is completely insufficient in view of the major mobilisation – up to one million soldiers – that the Russian president has just decreed. 

Moreover, the situation is incomprehensible when one considers, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did, that “with more than 80 percent of Russian ground forces now engaged in the operation in Ukraine, [the Russian armed forces] have limited room for manoeuvre to go to another country” – in other words, to open a new front.

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