Instead of populist "winter" payouts, 33,750 GRS could have been purchased to evacuate wounded
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ground robotic systems (GRS) designed for casualty evacuation, developed in the R&D labs of the First Separate Medical Battalion, has been successfully evacuating the wounded. The system was funded through charitable donations. The price of one such GRS is 800,000 hryvnias. In the author’s view, the President and his entourage are touting something paid for by ordinary Ukrainians.
This was reported by Mykola Maliukha, according to Censor.NET.
He also calculated how many GRSs could be purchased with the funds earmarked for the "winter thousand" handout and the "UZ-3000" program:
- at least 10 billion hryvnias for the next "winter thousand" payment = 12,500 GRSs for casualty evacuation;
- the cost of the UZ-3000 program (3,000 km of free train travel on Ukrzaliznytsia) is 17 billion hryvnias = 21,250 GRSs.
In other words, these two "populist" programs alone would amount to 33,750 GRSs, Maliukha notes.
Assuming the active front line is 1,000 km long, that would be 33.7 GRSs per kilometer. "But populism and future electoral prospects (holding onto power) matter more than the lives of soldiers," he adds.
