Following the news that Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are sending their stock of Soviet-era equipment to Ukraine;

William Davies, Associate Defense Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“Eastern European countries providing Ukraine with a number of their Soviet-era weapons systems to aid them in the conflict is in part because Ukrainian forces are already familiar with the systems and partially because of an expectation that the US will assist them in acquiring more modern Western systems.

“The main winner from this arrangement will be Western Defense companies, with Eastern European countries likely turning to the US as their primary partner for procuring new systems. The US has long pushed Eastern European companies to replace their Soviet-era equipment with Western equipment to increase NATO interoperability, and this shift will likely lead to a significantly increased number of contracts to major Western companies in the coming years.

“The US has already provided funding for replacing depleted Eastern European weapon stocks, with more than $300 million allocated in the most recent package. This funding will advance older programs which the US has funded to aid the process of nations getting rid of aging Soviet equipment. In the long term, even if the conflict abates, this process will mean that former Soviet states are no longer reliant on Russia for maintenance and repairs of equipment, and better able to cooperate with Western nations across various operations – providing a long-term boost to Western companies.”