U.S. should send Ukraine munitions even past expiration date - Hodges

That’s according to Ben Hodges, former US EUCOM Commanding General now serving as a NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics, who gave an exclusive comment to Ukrinform.

“The only thing that stops us from providing these weapons, these capabilities, is our political will,” he noted, adding that the expiration date of ATACMS is purely an “excuse”.

“If some of these weapons are at or past their expiration date, there's a good chance that most of them still can be used. I say, let's give those to Ukrainian Armed Forces who have shown themselves to be very, very innovative and skillful and integrating any capability they receive into an effective weapon. Let's do that instead of destroying these things at home,” Hodges concluded.

He admitted, however, that “no one weapon or one platform that would change everything.”

“It's a combination of air land and sea power, but certainly, at the top of my list would be long-range precision strike capability out to a range of at least 300 kilometers. So we're talking about ATACMS and Taurus,” said the former EUCOM Commander.

With those weapons, he believes, Ukrainian forces could hit every square meter of Russian-occupied Ukraine, including in Crimea.

“No Russian headquarters, no Russian artillery, no Russian logistics would be safe. No Russian ship anywhere in Crimea would be safe. No Russian airbase. No Shahed launch point in occupied Ukraine would be safe,” Hodges stressed.

He also stressed that the most important contribution that the United States and Germany could make to Ukraine would be to say that “we want Ukraine to actually win this war, that is in our strategic interest that you Ukraine is successful.”

He added that this would open the gates for the material aid that Ukraine needs and send a strong signal to Russia that their hopes that the West is uncertain of further support to Ukraine would be shattered.

Russia may this way understand that their war of attrition strategy is going to fail, Ben Hodges stressed.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, U.S. National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby neither denied nor confirmed the reports that the government was set to destroy hundreds of “expired” weapons President Volodymyr Zelensky had asked for specifically. Kirby said at a briefing on Wednesday that the question should be referred to the Department of Defense.

Photo: DELFI/Karolina Pansevič