Ukraine police battalion gets anti-aircraft guns from Defense Ministry - adviser
KYIV. Aug 27 (Interfax) - The Azov police battalion, which is fighting in eastern Ukraine, has received ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft cannon and other heavy weapons from the Defense Ministry, an adviser to the interior minister said on Wednesday.
"Just had a word with the commander of the Azov special police battalion, Andriy Biletsky. Under a Cabinet of Ministers directive issued yesterday on 48-hour fast-track supplies of weapons, last night the Azov battalion received ZU-23-2 artillery systems and other heavy armaments needed for effectively rebuffing attacks from the enemy," Anton Gerashchenko wrote on Facebook.
"We will solve the problem of filling the shortages of armaments for the rest of our volunteer police and National Guard battalions just as quickly," Gerashchenko said.
"Until late last night we had been evolving together with the Armaments Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine an interaction system for handovers of armaments and armor to our volunteer National Guard and police units," he said.
"I can say that, as regards armaments, complete mutual understanding was reached and interaction was organized with the General Staff yesterday," the adviser said.
"We have quite a lot of armored personnel carriers of old designs (BTR-60 and BRDM-1 and 2) that are pretty old and rusty and not yet usable, but, with combined efforts, all of us will be able to restore them and throw them into battle in order to cover our volunteer battalions with at least some kind of armor!" he said. "The restoration work may take about a month."