Israel-Hamas war underscores West’s lack of weapons, Ukrainian minister says
Ukrainian strategic industries minister Oleksandr Kamyshin believes that the current escalation in the Middle East has once again shown that the West’s weapons stockpiles are insufficient to defend democracies.
Concerns have been raised whether Ukraine’s allies will be able to keep up providing arms support given the need to help Israel, who suffered an attack from the Hamas terrorist group based in the Gaza strip, earlier this month.
In an interview with Politico, Mr Kamyshin called on Western democracies to ramp up investment in weapons, saying that arms factory output worldwide is falling miles short of what is needed.
Western countries needed to accelerate production of missiles, shells and military drones as close to frontlines as possible, the minister added.
"The free world should be producing enough to protect itself. That's why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe."
Mr Kamyshin called the current state of defence production capacities in the West ‘woeful’, made apparent not only by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine but also by the Hamas attack on Israel earlier this month.
"If you get together all the worldwide capacities for weapons production, for ammunition production, that will be not enough for this war," he stressed.
"What happens in Israel now shows and proves that the defence industry globally is a destination for investments for decades."
