Portuguese armored vehicles finally on their way to Kiev

Fourteen M113 tracked armored vehicles, for the transport of personnel, offered to Ukraine by the Portuguese Government as part of plans to help Kiev in the fight against Russian aggression, left the Santa Margarida military camp yesterday and are on their way to Poland, where they are expected to arrive. at the end of seven days – he knew Sunrise from a military source.

The vehicles, manufactured in the United States, travel by road aboard trucks with platform trailers belonging to transport companies in Poland, and after returning to that country, they must cross the border with Ukraine to be handed over to the military authorities.

Each platform transports two M113s, so there are seven trucks involved in the operation, which were contracted by the US Government for this specific purpose. In fact, the entire operation is financed by the USA and Great Britain, exempting Portugal from having the costs reflected in the treasury, which incidentally corresponds to the expectations that the Government of António Costa had in this regard.

Meanwhile, Nascer do Sol found out from the same source that Ukraine rejected the Portuguese offer of a batch of howitzers and Browning heavy machine guns, considering this equipment already obsolete and inadequate in the fight it is waging against the Russian invasion.

Moreover, the M113’s have been around for several decades now, but the Kiev government believes that they may still be useful. They are part of a batch of one hundred and a half of these vehicles acquired from the US second-hand by the Portuguese Army, at reduced prices, almost 30 years ago, when the US military personnel stationed in Europe in the 1990s, as part of the détente that followed the end of the Cold War with the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the implosion of the Soviet Union (1991). Since then, the M113s have been stationed in Santa Margarida, where their use has always been scarce, so the offer to Ukraine of a tenth of its manpower – made under pressure from the Pentagon (US Department of Defense), as the Sunrise of the Sol revealed just over two months ago – it does not represent a major gap in Portuguese military equipment.

In addition to ammunition and some light military material, Portugal had already sent to Ukraine, also as an offer, four M 40.12 WM/P armored vehicles, of original Italian manufacture, which belonged to the GNR – two by land transport and the other two by road. aerial. These vehicles had been adapted and improved by the GNR when it intervened in Iraq as a police stabilization force, alongside the US and British armies, which invaded and occupied the country in 2003.