Ukrainian repair crew battle ’metal fatigue’ against ageing hardware

Ukrainian serviceman repairing military vehicles that operate on Ukraine’s northern border with Russia say that the equipment is old and it is ‘unreal for it not to break’. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Ukraine’s military fought back with the equipment it had on hand: Soviet-era aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery, and a scattering of Western-supplied weapons such as Javelin anti-tank missiles. Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks to form what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called a “fist of freedom“ that could give its troops the firepower to break Russian defensive lines and reclaim occupied territory in the south and east. The unit has servicemen that underwent training abroad and is ready to work with foreign-made equipment, said Serhii Naiev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Zelenskiy said in November that Ukraine’s defensive constructions needed to be boosted and accelerated in