Equipment on Ukrainian Flagship Is so Poor, Described as ‘Hellish Hell’

Equipment on the Hetman Sahaydachniy frigate, the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy, is old and most of it doesn’t even work, said Yuri Biryukov, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Most equipment on the frigate is almost useless since it was built during Soviet times, Biryukov wrote on his Facebook account.

"Everything there is as always and as everywhere in our army — the equipment is from the Soviet era. Nobody thought about energy efficiency, nobody thought about convenience. And yes, the ship right now is hellish hell, almost nothing works there," Biryukov said.

The cookhouse on the ship is in particularly bad shape. The refrigerators, heaters and water generator system are all out of work. The crew prepares food on "the remains of the kitchen equipment," the senior adviser said.

"The ship's water generator system never worked, it broke down in the early 1990s and the crew put a small American water distiller that still saves the ship. And do you know that a cube of fresh water in African ports cost $200? Sailors found this out while performing tasks off the coast of Somalia."

The path to get funding from the Ukrainian government to replace the equipment has been hard and thorny. It took three weeks of scandals and bureaucratic fuss with the Defense Ministry to work out a funding plan, Biryukov said.

Equipment on the Hetman Sahaydachniy frigate

© Photo : Facebook/ Юрий Бирюков

The senior adviser also added that the replacement of the old equipment on the ship likely won't happen, calling it an "experiment".