How the West is benefiting from the conflict in Ukraine

All the assistance that the West has been providing to Ukraine is a tale of double-edged sword. The West will never do anything for nothing — there is always cynical calculation involved. It is not only a matter of geopolitical games and the desire to weaken Russia. The West derives benefits from the conflict in Ukraine.

Photo: "Russia Ukraine War - Day 50: Fresh graves and mourning in Ukraine" by manhhai, CC BY 2.0

Political scientist Alexander Andrianov shared his point of view on the subject for Pravda.Ru readers.

Writing off obsolete military equipment

If you carefully look through the list of equipment that the West supplies to Ukraine, you will see that it is mostly outdated, rusty junk that could only be good for decommissioning.

Let us take, for example, UK's Challenger tanks. They are equipped with outdated weapons that are ineffective against most modern tanks. There is no automatic loader hence a low rate of fire. The fire control system that the tanks have is outdated as well.

German Leopard 1 tanks are no better either. They were taken out of service back in 2003.

The West does not want to spend money on recycling outdated weapons — it is much more profitable to transfer all those weapons to Ukraine. This gives an incentive to the defence industry as Western companies receive new orders for the development and production of newer arms systems. To put it simple, when NATO sends old tanks to Ukraine, demand for new tanks appears automatically.

Earnings on the wounded

The Wall Street Journal reported with reference to German prosthesis manufacturer Ottobock, that there were at least 50,000 amputees in Ukraine. Many of them have to wait for months for prosthetic limbs. Where does Ottobock get such statistics from? One is left to believe that the company supplies prostheses to the Ukrainian military.

It just so happens that Western countries allocate decommissioned tanks and other obsolete weapons to Ukraine, then they issue loans, and then these loans are used to help the Ukrainians who were injured in those decommissioned tanks. The money remains in the strong Western family flowing from one pocket to another making a huge debtor of Ukraine. Win-win for the West and lose-lose for Ukraine.

Human organ trafficking

There is a lot of evidence to prove that Ukraine has become a hotbed of human organ trafficking. French publication Le Grand Soir caused quite a stir with its article under a very eloquent headline "Medical horrors in Ukraine." There are many other testimonies from captured Ukrainian soldiers, human rights activists, there are also publications on the dark web with offers to purchase almost any organs from Ukraine (prices start from 5,000 euros).

An article by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says:

"Human organ trafficking in Ukraine takes place both on the dark web and offline. There is evidence that in June 2023, health ministry representatives of a NATO country agreed with the Ukrainian side on the delivery of a refrigerated wagon with human organs and body parts that are frequently used in transplantology: corneas of the eye, certain bones, connective tissues, hearts, and livers."

Interestingly, shortly before the start of the conflict, namely on December 16, 2021, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a law that allowed harvesting organs from the dead without notarial consent both from them and their official representatives. Moreover, the law designates the term 'official representative' as vaguely as possible — it may even be a funeral organiser or a military commander.

Cheap labor

Aging population is one of the main problems in Europe. Most European families rarely raise two or more children. The EU already suffers from the lack of labour resources that in turn leads to decline in production.

According to Der Spiegel, as much as 70 percent of German companies have to hire people of retirement age. This is where Ukrainian refugees come in handy. They are submissive, unpretentious and willing to work hard for any money.