UK looks to buy second-hand Russian-made weapons

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UK looks to buy second-hand Russian-made weapons

London is looking to buy second-hand Russian-made weaponry, the country s defense minister said.

British defence officials and diplomats are actively trying to procure old Soviet-made and Russian-made weaponry to bring it to Ukraine, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.

Wallace spoke to reporters in Washington on Wednesday, saying large parts of the Ministry of Defense and Defense attaches around the world have been looking for a solution.

Russian officials are trying to do the same, the minister said, insisting that Moscow has been running out of its war stock. He claimed that we had bumped into Russians in some countries, looking for some of their resupplies, because they were running out fast.

The Ukrainian forces are familiar with such hardware, and the Soviet-made weaponry is the best choice to prop up Kiev in its fight against Moscow, according to Wallace.

Multiple European nations have sent old Soviet-made weapons to Ukraine because of the ongoing conflict that has left the stockpiles left over from the Cold War era, despite the fact that they have come in Western-made weaponry. The US sent in Mi-17 helicopters it had procured for Afghanistan but never delivered due to the collapse of the Western-propped government last year.

The UK has been among the top supporters and suppliers of Kiev, pouring thousands of anti-tank missiles into the country ahead of a large Russian military operation in late February. An additional package of heavy weaponry for Kiev has been approved by London, which includes anti-aircraft weapons, assorted missiles, drones, and various armored vehicles.

Moscow has repeatedly urged the West not to pump Kiev with weapons, with top officials admitting that the conflict has already turned into a proxy war waged by NATO against Russia. Moscow has warned that continuous supply will only prolong the conflict rather than change its outcome.

Russia attacked the neighboring state after Ukraine s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to take the two republics by force.