Desperate Ukrainians forced to repurpose billion-dollar weapons from ‘trash’ as Congress haggles over US aid

SOMEWHERE IN UKRAINE – Under cover of night, as alarms warn of incoming missiles, dozens of mechanics work on billions of dollars worth of Western military equipment in a nondescript, hollowed-out garage in the countryside.

In this undisclosed location, kept secret to avoid becoming a Russian target, Ukrainian soldiers use their technical skills to fix American-sent weapons and equipment such as Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles damaged – sometimes catastrophically – by Kremlin invaders.

“Before the war, I used to sell cars,” a soldier named Valentyn told The Post. “Now, I fix these.”

(The Ukrainian troops declined to give their last names for fear of retaliation by Russian forces.)

Describing the roughly 5,500-pound American Humvees on which Valentyn works as a “car” is a stretch – even for someone who speaks English as a second language.

These stalwarts of the Gulf War and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have been sent to Ukraine to help move troops and cargo under heavy fire.

“These,” Valentyn says, “save lives.”

As Congress twiddles its thumbs amid growing and more urgent calls for continued military aid to Kyiv, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are swiftly running out of not just the expensive weapons – but even the smallest of spare parts to repair and renew the systems the US has already spent billions to provide in the first place.

Aleksander, the commander of the repair base, says Ukraine has no time to wait.

The UAF must do what it can to return these critical weapons to the battlefields to save the lives of other soldiers fighting under intense shelling on the frontlines.

So, the soldier-mechanics weld together parts from different weapons, repairing the impressive machines with what remains of other destroyed equipment in a process similar to sticking pieces in a giant jigsaw puzzle.

They have learned to salvage the undamaged or fixable parts of the weapons systems, and combine them together to give them a new life.

“That one there,” Aleksander told The Post, gesturing to the burnt-out frame of one Humvee. “In the US, it would be trash. But we will restore it.”

Of course, new vehicles would be nice, he said. But the Ukrainians do what they must to stay in the fight.

It is “existential,” they say. Life under brutal Russian rule – after more than three decades of post-Soviet freedom and independence – is unacceptable.

While American and allied troops trained them to repair the systems with new spare parts, the facility has only received about 30% of what they need, Aleksander said.

The Pentagon is aware of the shortfall, but without supplemental funding approved by Congress, shipments of these critical parts have stopped.

But desperation inspires ingenuity, and these masterminds have figured out how to turn merge three broken systems into one, renewed and ready to fight another day.

At a second facility hundreds of miles away, Ukrainian troops are restoring powerful US-made M777 howitzers, which defense experts say offer Kyiv “additional artillery capability and capacity” – especially compared to the Soviet-era systems used by Moscow.

“In general, Ukraine’s Western-provided artillery systems and munitions have given Ukraine a valuable qualitative artillery advantage in terms of range and precision,” said John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia program at the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

“Ukraine could still use more, however, and they don’t have to be higher-end vehicles like Bradleys or Strykers,” he added.

For example, Hardie said that “even the old M113s Ukraine has received have been useful, but Ukraine needs more of them.”

Those fully tracked armored personnel carriers – developed in the early 1960s and put to work during the Vietnam War – were replaced decades ago as the Army’s front-line combat vehicles by the M2 and M3 Bradleys, but are still used for support.

“The United States has thousands of old M113s sitting in storage and is currently replacing the ones still on active duty,” added Hardie.

Some Ukrainian troops, including the commander of the second facility, expressed frustration at the thought of unused and even broken American weapons systems sitting unused in a military stockpile somewhere.

“I know the US military has 200 M777 [howitzers] just sitting around rusting,” the commander, named Valery, told The Post. “Send them to us. We’ll get them on the battlefield.”

In the next breath, however, the tall, stoic officer said he and his colleagues were “very grateful to all the Americans for what you are doing, for all the equipment.”

The Ukrainians are not asking for cash – the vast majority of the money spent would filter back into the American economy.

Most of the systems on which they work are made only by US manufacturers, and a report last year found that $60 billion of the $68 billion in the funding approved for Ukraine last year never left American shores.

It’s a concept the Ukrainians can’t quite understand. Why would the land once known as the “arsenal of democracy” decline to ensure Ukraine remains a democratic stronghold in eastern Europe?

“If not you, who?” asked Valery. “We do the fighting. We do the dying.

“All we need from America is the weapons and parts we will use to defeat Putin.”