Revealed: the Ukrainian facility where UK engineers help fix vital weapons | Ukraine

At an unmarked and undisclosed location in western Ukraine, British and Ukrainian engineers are working side by side to repair damaged military equipment, getting under the chassis of artillery systems and gutting British-donated howitzers.

Given the sensitivities of all military-related work in Ukraine, the existence of this facility, along with three other similar facilities in Ukraine, has so far been kept quiet, buried in neutral language so as not to attract too much attention.

But earlier this week, during UK defense secretary Luke Pollard’s visit to Ukraine, media were given access and invited to view the site for the first time, the Guardian reported. Pollard said the facility was an example of Britain doing things “no other nation is willing or able to do”.

Although there are no British military personnel in the field, there are British engineers working in the country under contract with the Ministry of Defence. For security reasons, other countries often choose to use repair kits outside Ukraine, resulting in longer journeys and delays in getting the repair kit back to the front.

The facility visited by the Guardian has repair bays for up to 30 vehicles and can repair a range of weapons systems, including British-made AS-90 self-propelled howitzers. The AS-90 was initially planned to be withdrawn from service with the British army in the 2030s, but over the past few years a decision was made to donate the entire system stock to Ukraine.

“There are some things we don’t talk about in military times, but it comes down to industrial partnerships and ‘You donated all these AS-90s, what happened to them?'” Pollard said. “As for the legitimate question of … we want to start telling the story,” he said.

He acknowledged that locating the facility in Ukraine involved risks, but said it was “a risk worth taking and managing” in terms of support for Kiev.

“Any operations or support provided in Ukraine would clearly carry a greater risk than any operations or support provided in Poland or anywhere protected by NATO’s Article 5, but Ukraine needs exactly this kind of support to remain in the war,” he said.

Engineers and technicians from two British companies, BAE Systems and AMS, are working with Ukrainian colleagues to repair the kit. Many of the Ukrainians hired by the companies previously worked at Ukraine’s military enterprises, which were damaged or destroyed, and are now being trained to work with other equipment donated by the British and foreigners.

Much of the equipment used by the Ukrainian armed forces is now obsolete, meaning a new supply chain for spare parts must be established. BAE was involved in the original production of the AS-90 and had access to technical drawings, but other systems required more creative approaches.

For the Tunguska, a Soviet-era anti-aircraft platform also fixed at the facility, and the Soviet T-72 tanks used by Ukraine, engineers visited the Bovington tank museum in Dorset, examined the versions of the vehicles on display there, and worked out how they could produce spare parts in the UK.

Swedish Archer artillery systems were also fixed at the site under a cooperation agreement for which the Swedish government paid, but the work was done by British and Ukrainian engineers. It is hoped that in the future the project will be expanded to include more regions and more countries. “We want a structured, organized approach where every country donating equipment has a structure to connect to,” Pollard said.

Possibilities like these provide insight into how Western support for Ukraine might play out following a potential peace agreement. A so-called “coalition of the willing” has come together, consisting of countries prepared to offer support to Ukraine to prevent Russia from attacking again if Donald Trump’s efforts to reach an agreement between Moscow and Kiev are successful.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed his desire for any post-war agreement to include a provision for the deployment of western troops in Ukraine, and last September Finnish president Alexander Stubb told the Guardian that a coalition of the willing would include “real security guarantees” that would force western countries to go to war with Russia if Moscow violated the ceasefire.

However, the last few years have shown that no western country is ready to go to war in Ukraine, and this calculus is unlikely to change. “We know that our only real security guarantee will be a strong Ukrainian army,” a Ukrainian security source said.

Last month, British defense minister John Healey said he hoped to send British troops to Ukraine after a peace deal, but that those troops were not expected to come into conflict with Russian forces.

“UK forces are not a deterrent, a stronger Ukrainian deterrent,” Pollard said, so the focus was on renewing Ukrainian equipment and training Ukrainian troops.

He said that currently Ukrainian units are using their equipment “to the point of destruction” and that the post-ceasefire task will be to quickly restore all equipment at the front, something that is not possible when they are in use during day-to-day operations.

“One of the key roles for the UK in the coalition of the willing is to revitalize the Ukrainian armed forces, and to do this the infrastructure needs to be ready for use on the first day of peace,” he said.