by Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Joe Biden's government has decided to authorize Pentagon subcontracting companies to work in Ukraine to carry out maintenance and repair work on weapons supplied to Kyiv by the US military, which it banned until now, we learned from officials in Washington.
A U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said those contractors would be limited in number and located far from the front lines. They will not be engaged in combat.
This “will help ensure that U.S.-supplied equipment can be quickly repaired when damaged,” he said.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has supplied Kyiv with tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment. But Kyiv must so far take its weapons out of its territory to carry out major repairs or rely on videoconferences or other “means at hand” to remedy the situation.
Repairs may have been slowed down by these restrictions, especially as Washington delivers increasingly complex equipment to Ukraine, such as Patriot missile systems or F-16 combat planes, American officials note.
“There is a lot of equipment that they are not using because it is damaged,” one of them told Reuters.
Another pointed out that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development already have contractors in Ukraine.
No American military will be required to defend these companies contracted with the Pentagon, which will be responsible for their security, he added.
“There are already a large number of American companies that have personnel in Ukraine to secure contracts with the Ukrainian government, so this is not going to lead to a substantial increase in American company employees working on the ground in Ukraine,” he said. declared the first source cited.
However, it is unclear how long this measure can be applied, between now and January 20 when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, who has criticized the extent of American military aid to Ukraine and promises to quickly end the Russian-Ukrainian war.
(Reporting Phil Stewart; Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version)
