Luxembourg company buys Grad rockets for Ukraine – NYT

A special company, which is engaged in purchasing shells for the "Grad" multiple rocket launching systems and transferring these rockets to Ukraine, was created in Luxembourg.

Rubryka writes about this with reference to The New York Times.

The armed forces of Luxembourg consist of:

• fewer than 1,000 military personnel,
• one cargo plane,
• two helicopters for shared use with the police,
• and fewer than 200 trucks.

Still, the country has sent to Ukraine 102 anti-tank missiles and 20,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition from its arsenal, which was as much weaponry as Luxembourg could afford.

"That's why Luxembourg, a country of 645,000 people, decided to use its considerable wealth to try to buy arms for Ukraine on the open market. Last spring, it signed a multimillion-dollar contract to supply 6,000 Soviet-era missiles," the article reads.

The NYT reports that after the russian invasion, Luxembourg, determined to contribute more, created a two-person team of its own arms dealers. They intended to explore the commercial arms markets in Europe and the United States.

Luxembourg's Defense Minister Francois Bausch said:

"We are so small, we don't have a big army and therefore a limited supply, and we wanted to help Ukraine from the beginning."

In the end, Luxembourg had to settle for 600 Grad surface-to-air missiles, one-tenth of the original target, and hand them over to Ukraine. According to Bausch, Luxembourg managed to deliver or contract about $94 million worth of arms and other military aid to Ukraine from manufacturers in Great Britain, France, Poland and the Netherlands, which is about 16% of the country's defense budget.

Luxembourg arms dealers quickly concluded a contract with a Czech manufacturer for the purchase of Soviet and NATO caliber ammunition. They should be delivered already this spring. The manufacturer, whose name the dealers asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, also sold them 12,500 RPG-7 anti-tank grenades (for reference: RPG-7 is a portable, reusable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank, rocket-propelled grenade launcher).

For reference:

Luxembourg handed over Primoco UAV One 150 drones to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They were manufactured in the Czech Republic.

Luxembourg also provided Ukraine with additional HMMWV high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles.