Ukraine’s Western long-range weapons, tanks have impact but nothing critical: Putin

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Western long-range weapon systems and tanks supplied to Ukraine do cause damage but do not have any “critical” impact in the battlefield.

Putin spoke of how much hope Ukraine has placed on the Western supplies of weapons, especially the long-range missiles: “Well, yes, they cause damage, but nothing critical happens in the combat zone with the use of missiles,” state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying

He added: “The same is true of foreign-made tanks [and] infantry fighting vehicles,” claiming that as of July 12, “311 tanks have been destroyed since June 4 alone” – when Ukraine launched its counter-offensive to reclaim territory occupied by Russia.

Putin said: “a significant part of them [tanks], at least a third, are Western-made, including Leopards,” adding that they burned better than the Soviet-made T-72 tanks.

Tanks are crucial to Ukraine’s counter-offensive and Russia has targeted dozens of the Western-supplied armored vehicles, most recently the German-made Leopards. While Ukraine doesn’t publicly acknowledge loss of Western-supplied gear, this month, Russia claimed to have destroyed dozens of Leopard tanks supplied to Kyiv by Wester allies. In June, Ukraine requested more Leopard tanks from Germany to help its ground forces in the counter-offensive battles against Russian forces, after Moscow said it had destroyed at dozens of Kyiv’s tanks.

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