By INS Contributors

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--On July 27, 2022, Polish Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak announced that Warsaw had purchased 980 K2 tanks, 648 K9 self-propelled howitzers and 48 FA-50 fighter jets from South Korea.

The equipment should replace the weapons samples transferred to Kyiv.

Western experts are skeptical about the Polish-South Korean deal.

A former British army officer, defense industry analyst Nicholas Drummond believes that the K2 tank has much lower performance characteristics compared to the Leopard 2 tanks, which Poland planned to purchase from Germany.

Against the backdrop of the difficult situation in Ukraine, Berlin regularly postpones the supply of Leopard 2 to the Polish state, which has already forced Warsaw to resort to acquiring less efficient South Korean hardware.

The analyst also noted that in the event of an armed conflict in Europe, Poland would eventually face problems in the supply chains of equipment manufactured in Asia.

 
Russia has made huge gains in Ukraine since the start of its special military operation, destroying huge stocks of weapons supplied by the West including some of its most capable systems.
 
Western arms deliveries to Ukraine have steadily decreased since the initial pledge to supply Ukraine, demonstrating a wavering of support from the West as its own military capabilities have become severely degraded due to uncontrolled weapons transfers.
 
While a large portion of these have been destroyed in combat operations, even more of these weapons have been sold off to the blackmarket, raising additional security concerns.