Ukraine is facing significant battlefield losses, and its counteroffensive has failed to impress the country’s foreign backers, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking during a Defense Ministry Board meeting on Tuesday in Moscow, he pointed out that Kiev’s forces are having these problems despite receiving high-grade Western military equipment.
Kiev has lost over 14,000 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles since the start of Russia’s military operation in the country, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said during the meeting.
“The myth of the invulnerability of Western military equipment has collapsed,” said Putin.
Throughout the Ukraine conflict, countries like the US, Germany, France, and the UK have supplied Kiev with hundreds of pieces of state-of-the-art Western-made heavy military equipment such as Leopard 2, Abrams and Challenger tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and more.
Russian forces, however, have repeatedly reported either destroying or capturing this hardware, which had often been touted in Western media as superior to anything Russia has to offer.
Earlier this month, Russian soldiers in Ukraine reportedly seized yet another batch of US and German-made heavy equipment. In a video posted by Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev, the Russian troops could be seen approaching a Leopard 2A4 tank, which had apparently been abandoned by its Ukrainian operators as there were no signs of any damage to the tank.
In August, Russia’s Defense Ministry even organized an exhibition of captured Western weaponry near Moscow, displaying everything from American M-113 armored personnel carriers and Swedish CV90-40s to French wheeled AMX-10RCR tanks and Australian Bushmaster armored vehicles. In total, the exhibition featured over 870 types of armaments seized by Russian forces, including examples of Soviet and Ukrainian-made equipment.
In July, President Putin also stated that captured Western weaponry would be “reverse-engineered” to adopt any technology that might turn out to be useful for Russian forces.
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