The struggle of a small NATO country to arm Ukraine

LUXEMBOURG – Luxembourg’s military consists of fewer than 1,000 troops, one cargo plane, two helicopters shared with the police force, and fewer than 200 trucks, ranging from Humvees to around 10 state-of-the-art Dingo combat reconnaissance vehicles.

There are no Patriot tanks, warplanes or air defense missiles to contribute to the Western push to arm Ukraine.. The 102 anti-tank missiles and 20,000 machine gun cartridges that Luxembourg shipped from its arsenal were all the weapons it could afford to give away, without compromising its own military readiness.

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So Luxembourg, a nation with a population of 645,000, has decided to use its considerable wealth to try to buy weapons for Ukraine on the free market, signing a multibillion-dollar deal last spring for 6,000 Soviet-era rockets. In the end, however, the government handed out only 600 and was forced to find ways to spend the money.

At a time when Western stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons and ammunition are running low, Luxembourg’s woes offer a window into pressing problem of supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs hold off Russia until sophisticated Western rockets, missiles and tanks arrive later this year.

Ukraine has been using up munitions at a prodigious rate since the start of the war and relies on its allies for supplies. But there are no arms manufacturers in Luxembourg, and the government had already given away everything it thought it could afford from its limited arsenal.

However, determined to contribute more to the war effort, Luxembourg created an in-house team of two arms dealers shortly after the Russian invasion. They decided to monitor the commercial arms markets in Europe and the United Statesand demonstrate that his country’s commitment to defeating Russia was as great as that of its much larger NATO partners.

“We are very small, we don’t have a large army and therefore our supplies are limited, and from the very beginning we wanted to help Ukraine,” Luxembourg Defense Minister François Bausch, who is also Defense Minister, said in a recent interview. . Transport and Deputy Prime Minister of the country. “But we’re flexible, so we can go buy what they need from the market and deliver it directly to them.”

He also drew a parallel with Luxembourg’s history as an invaded state during World War I and World War II. “We’ve been occupied many times over the past century, so we have tremendous sensitivity to what’s happening now in Ukraine,” Bausch said.

And he added: “We can’t let Putin do what he wants”.

Most NATO states are donating from their military arsenals, in a fairly simple process, but some are also buying weapons to sell on commercial markets.

But it’s a shadier deal, especially when buying Soviet-era weapons which are otherwise of little use to NATO, to vendors who do not want to be identified for fear of jeopardizing their business by angering Russia.

The men of the new arms purchasing unit in Luxembourg knew nothing of it when they went on a tour of Europe. They soon discovered that they could order the Soviet-era rockets, BM-21 Grads, to be built at a manufacturing facility in the Czech Republic—a natural fit, they reasoned, for Ukrainian troops already trained in their use. But, As is often the case in the unpredictable world of arms acquisition, the deal quickly went awry..

With the high demand for Grad after the start of the war, the Czech manufacturer ran out of parts. To make matters worse, most of the company’s suppliers were located in Russia or in countries that refused to export equipment that could be used to help Ukraine. Ultimately, Luxembourg had to settle for 600 rockets, a tenth of its initial target.

Not all of the country’s deals have failed. It has managed to deliver or contract about $94 million worth of arms and other military aid for Ukraine from manufacturers in Britain, France, Poland and the Netherlands, about 16 percent of the country’s defense budget, according to Bausch.

But it’s been a struggle, and it’s still a paltry amount compared to the billions of dollars in security aid NATO powers like Britain, Germany and the United States have given to Ukraine since last February. These three countries alone have pledged nearly $40 billion.

Luxembourg spends less on its military than any other NATO country, and was the only state in the alliance to contribute less than 1 percent of its gross domestic product to national defense last year. (NATO members have pledged to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, but only a third of the 30 states do so.)

And Luxembourg, with a GDP of more than $130,000 per capita – by far the highest in NATO – has provided Ukraine with just $25 million in humanitarian aid and contributions to NATO and European Union programs in support of the ‘Ukraine, according to data provided by its government.

This has drawn criticism from other Allies, particularly in the context of the current conflict in Ukraine.

“The rapidly changing security environment forces us to find arguments for doing more, rather than reasons why it would be difficult to do so,” US Ambassador to Luxembourg Thomas M. Barrett wrote in an op-ed last week in June.

But Luxembourg officials said it was more complicated. Even if the government decides to spend more money supplying Ukraine’s military, Bausch said, there aren’t enough people in its wallet to decide how to spend it quickly and without the risk of the funds being misused.

And it still exists problem of finding weapons to buyas the two privileged arms dealers soon discovered, both military personnel who have deployed to conflict zones.

In an extensive interview this month, in which they insisted on anonymity for security reasons, the two described laborious and often frustrating negotiations with commercial intermediaries, compulsive calls to manufacturers and even Google searches to locate the weapons they need. ‘Ukraine needs.

Ammunition is still at the top of the list, but sometimes the search leads to a dead end. Sometimes the prices are inflated. In other cases, they say, other buyers – including other allied countries – got hold of the material before they could close the deal.

And then there’s the case of the BM-21 Grad rockets, which fell short due to production limitations. All was not lost, however, as Luxembourg arms dealers quickly contracted with the same Czech manufacturer for both NATO and Soviet-era caliber ammunition, to be delivered by the end of spring. The manufacturer, whose dealers requested anonymity for security reasons, also sold them 12,500 RPG-7 anti-tank grenades, a version of a Soviet weapon; they were handed over to Ukraine in the first months of the war.

The merchants said so there is little room to negotiate prices, given the high demand for these weapons. And, hopefully, which is far from guaranteed, it takes at least two weeks to review the sale, draw up the contract and submit it for the necessary approvals.

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