USA Sending Ex-Soviet Air Defense Missiles Systems to Ukraine
The Pentagon
over the years has acquired Soviet equipment as part of a clandestine program,
and now such weapons are going to Ukraine
The U.S.
is sending some of the Soviet-made air defense equipment it secretly acquired
decades ago to bolster the Ukrainian military as it seeks to fend off Russian air and missile
attacks, U.S. officials said.
The systems, which said include the SA-8, are decades old and were obtained by the U.S.
so it could examine the technology used by the Russian military and
which Moscow has exported around the world.
Japan spots Russian amphibious ships traveling between its islands
Japan says Russian amphibious ships transiting through a narrow strait between its islands could be moving fresh forces from Russia’s far east to Ukraine.
Four landing ship tanks, including one with its deck full of military trucks, were seen sailing in the Pacific Ocean westbound in the middle of last week, according to a news release from the Joint Staff’s Public Affairs office within Japan’s Defense Ministry.
The ships were the Alligator IV-class Nikolay Vilkov; the Ropucha I-class Oslyabya and Admiral Nevelskov; and the Ropucha II-class Peresvet. All four belong to the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet and make up the entirety of its major amphibious units.
Photos released by the ministry showed the top deck of the Nikolay Vilkov packed with at least 17 military trucks..
The ships were then detected by Japan on the morning of March 16, 220 kilometers northeast of Cape Shiryazaki.
The vessels were watched from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s destroyer JS Shiranui and P-3C maritime patrol aircraft.
The route taken by the Russian ships appears to suggest they were heading from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia’s Kamchakta Peninsula to Vladivostok, where they will most likely be loaded onto westbound trains if they are indeed bound for Ukraine.
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