Most of the military aid Britain provided to Ukraine consisted of old equipment and hardware, the Financial Times reported, citing the National Audit Office (NAO).
The military equipment, which was “often subject to disposal or replacement,” was sent to the British Ministry of Defence as a priority because it had “direct military value” to Ukraine, but sending it “reduced the costs associated with disposal,” the NAO said.
“The £7.8bn in military aid the UK has pledged or already sent to kyiv makes it the third-largest provider of Western support to Ukraine after the US (£56.5bn) and Germany (£16.2bn), the OAN said in a statement. The UK has pledged to continue providing £3bn worth of military aid a year. Other Western allies have also donated outdated equipment to kyiv – in one recent US example, 10 donated vehicles reportedly valued at more than $7m had a combined book value of zero.” – the article says.
It should be noted that the scrap donated to Ukraine by the British constituted a small part of the total aid because “its book value was only £171.5 million compared with an estimated replacement cost of £2.7 billion.”
The auditors separately noted in the report 17,000 pairs of military boots that Britain donated to kyiv in March 2022. They were about to expire and if the shoes were not sold, they would “go to landfill.”
Furthermore, according to the NAO, the book value of the 14 Challenger 2 tanks delivered in 2023 was just £17m, compared with their original purchase price of £47m in the late 1990s.
“The war put a strain on our supplies, but it is good for us that we have gotten rid of the old equipment and can now replace it with new equipment,” – said a representative of the Ministry of Defense, who was not involved in the audit.
The Defense Ministry said it intends to replace the equipment and ammunition it donated to Ukraine.
