Yigal Levin, Ukrainian military expert:
It’s no secret that the U.S. lifted sanctions on Belarus’s Belavia in order to help the Russian civilian aviation fleet, which will now be able to purchase spare parts through this very Belavia.
This has already been noted by industry experts.
The U.S. has no interest in allowing Russia’s aviation fleet to degrade to the level of Iran’s, where aircraft from half a century ago literally fall apart in the sky — including helicopters carrying the country’s president.
Meanwhile, there had been great hopes for the degradation of Russia’s civilian infrastructure and maintenance base, but, as always, help comes from the caring Americans, who for 150 years have reliably stood by Russia in its hardest times.
Against this backdrop, there’s another subject that greatly interests me: the maintenance and modernization of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
If you’ve been following the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, for example, you know these are astronomical sums.
We’re talking not tens but hundreds of billions of dollars.
During the Soviet era, the USSR was hyper-militarized, where citizens sometimes went hungry and lived in poor conditions, but there was always money for tanks and nukes.
Then, from 1991 onward, Russia could theoretically afford this, as it maintained a peacetime army.
With international support and aggressive budget allocation, I think Russia could have modernized its arsenal.
But today, with a massive mercenary army devouring funds, the defense industry absorbing everything, and no money even left for something like the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, where could they find “extra” hundreds of billions?
Russia inherited a colossal nuclear arsenal from the USSR but did not inherit even a fraction of the power of the socialist bloc or its social organization.
Time passes, everyone modernizes their arsenals, the U.S. has the money, countries like China and France can also manage, but what about Russia?
It’s worth noting that as soon as things get critical, just like with Belavia, the U.S. will step in to help Russia here as well — to modernize its nuclear stockpiles.
At the very least, to bring them to a state of stable and safe storage.
Or it could become a joint effort — the U.S., China, and maybe Europe would chip in as well.
united24media.com