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Over the past 14 months, Western countries have pledged to provide Ukraine with more than $65 billion worth of direct military aid, most of it coming from the United States. Now, with a major Ukrainian counteroffensive looming, prominent officials in Kyiv have begun to call for those Western countries to assume a more forward role in the maintenance of that new arsenal, including the provision of technical personnel on the ground closer to the war zone.
"I am sure that our partners could hire such specialists, and we would do everything in our capacity to organize for them to come to Ukraine," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in response to a question from Newsweek at a briefing held on April 10 at the Ukraine Media Center in Odesa. "We have been suggesting for quite a long time that our partners assist in providing maintenance at the maximum proximity to the battlefield."
"It is very complicated to send a tank all the way to Europe for repairs," Reznikov explained. "If we could have specialists with access to the necessary documents come here, it would really help."
Anyone who says they're doing well enough with tele-maintenance is lying to themselves.
Currently, all of the Western technicians known to be assisting Ukraine with the maintenance of imported weapons systems are located outside the country's borders. Although thousands of ex-active duty military personnel have voluntarily taken up arms on Kyiv's behalf, maintenance specialists, even experienced ones, require access to classified technical manuals in order to perform their duties at the requisite standard.
But publicly facilitating the provision of manpower on the ground in a war against Russia, even in a non-combat capacity, is a step that U.S. officials have resisted. In the weeks prior to the start of Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, the U.S. withdrew a training mission of approximately 150 Florida National Guardsmen from Ukraine, even as it sent 3,000 additional troops to Poland.
"Our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict," President Joseph Biden said on the day that Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border. "Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east."
"Let me be clear," Biden added. "These are totally defensive moves on our part. We have no intention of fighting Russia."
Yet despite the recent emergence of leaked documents purporting to show that 14 U.S. special forces personnel, along with 84 elite soldiers from other NATO countries, were physically present in Ukraine as of early March 2023, the White House has shown no indication that it is prepared to change its policy when it comes to the work of technical specialists. (U.S. officials did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment.)
Yet, as the war enters its second spring and Ukraine prepares its rapidly Westernizing arsenal for its much-anticipated counteroffensive, the supply of spare parts, instruction manuals, and skilled technical specialists could prove to be just as critical to the operation's ultimate success as the continued provision of shells and rockets.
While workarounds, including the use of long-distance video conferencing between Ukrainian mechanics on the ground and Western engineers located safely in Poland—dubbed "tele-maintenance"— have helped to at least improve the efficiency with which Ukraine can repair its Western-made weapons systems, experts say that more could be done to ensure that the maximum amount of donated weaponry is returned to the front lines in working order in the shortest possible time.
Other than ATACAMs [longer range, HIMARS-compatible rockets] and modern aircraft, we have received every system that we need, even if we could still use many of them in greater quantities.
"Anyone who says they're doing well enough with tele-maintenance is lying to themselves," former Army Lieutenant Colonel and National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman told Newsweek. "Yes, the Ukrainians are working relative miracles given the policy constraints which are being placed upon them, but they could be doing significantly better if those policy constraints were removed."
Vindman, who as a private citizen has spent much of the past year exploring ways to improve Ukraine's in-country maintenance capacity, argues that Western contractors could be operating on Ukrainian territory safely and effectively.
"Almost all of the risk can be mitigated," he explained. "You can distribute the operations so that there aren't any large concentrations of Western personnel for the Russians to target. Then, in the places where contractors are present, maintaining military discipline and leveraging Ukraine's highly sophisticated early warning systems can allow them to take cover any time there are potential incoming threats."
According to Vindman, the necessary Western footprint would be relatively small.
"In Iraq and Afghanistan, we had major maintenance facilities with thousands and thousands of contractors," he said. "But thanks to the technical and industrial base of Ukraine, just a few dozen contractors with access to the proper specs would substantially improve their maintenance capacity."
The call for more help with maintenance comes at a time when Ukraine has already been granted permission to import most of the Western weapons systems on its wish list, even if the quantity of weaponry provided still does not fully meet Kyiv's needs.
In the early months of the war, Javelin anti-tank rockets helped Ukrainian forces repel Russia's attempts to seize major cities, including Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. In the spring of 2022, the introduction of HIMARS launchers allowed Ukraine to disrupt Russian logistics networks and to hit command and control centers located dozens of miles behind the conflict's front lines. In the summer of 2022, French-made Caesar self-propelled howitzers and British M777 towed artillery pieces began arriving on the battlefield, helping to reduce Russia's firepower advantage. By the late winter of 2023, U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, German Leopard 2 tanks, and an assortment of infantry fighting vehicles had arrived on Ukrainian soil.
"Other than ATACAMs [longer range, HIMARS-compatible rockets] and modern aircraft, we have received every system that we need, even if we could still use many of them in greater quantities," Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, told Newsweek.
"The next necessary step is to establish service centers on the territory of Ukraine—for artillery pieces, for self-propelled Howitzers, and for Western-made tanks," he added. "Our technical specialists have the experience to adapt from Soviet-legacy to Western systems very quickly, if only they are given the proper training and access to the necessary technical documents."
