Germany is actively helping Ukraine in its war with Russia and is supplying it with weapons, including modern ones. Many of its arms shipments to Ukraine include weapons from the Soviet, East Germany, and the Cold War eras.
While Germany is sending thousands of Soviet era 9K32 Strela-2 MANPADS, before delivery however, it is forced to check its stocks and the conditions of weapons being delivered.
This due diligence on weapon deliveries came in the wake of German online portal Der Spiegel asking whether the thousands of 9K32 Strela-2 MANPADS from the old “East German warehouses” were operational. It turns out, 700 units of 9K32 Strela-2 MANPADS were non-functional.
A report by Der Spiegel states, a large percentage of the man-portable air-defense systems provided by Germany to Ukraine had “microcracks in the fuel charge of the munition leading to “corrosion/oxidation”.
Incidentally, it is perfectly normal for a 35-year-old unused and stored weapon to have a defect, preventing it of being used normally.
This issue has raised troubling questions: whether the old weapons systems being supplied to Ukraine are functional, given that they were stored for decades in warehouses. The vast majority of the weapons being supplied to Ukraine are old Soviet era weapon systems.
