Ecuador to give Ukraine outdated Mi-17s in exchange for US UH-60 Black Hawk

According to Defense Express, the agreements reached in January 2024 between the United States and Ecuador call for the transfer of Soviet weapons from the Ecuadorian army's stockpiles to Ukraine in exchange for the provision of cutting-edge American-made equipment for counterinsurgency operations against local drug cartels. These agreements will govern the implementation of this transfer.

However, there's a catch: out of the nine Mi-17s that the Ecuadorian Air Force intends to transfer, only one is in a good shape, while the rest can only be disassembled for spare parts. This was reported by the Infodefensa portal.

“From Defense Express, we would like to add that this is a follow-up to the story in which Ecuador confirmed its intention to transfer its BM-21 Grad, Osa-AKM SAMs and Mi-17 helicopters to Ukraine, for which it has already received a de facto ban on its bananas from Russia. Although there is no clear localization of when this transfer should finally take place, the story evokes somewhat mixed emotions,” the company writes.

From one perspective, this is gear that the Ukrainian military is accustomed to using, which eliminates the need to build new infrastructure, and that we would demand at the front "yesterday." On the other hand, assuming the transfer is successful, the question is how long it will take the Armed Forces to use this equipment.

After all, the Ecuadorian leadership has even publicly admitted that it plans to give Ukraine essentially scrap metal, which is currently in a non-combatant state. Therefore, there may even be a risk that Ukraine may end up with a set of “spare parts donors.”