MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/. UK Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin’s assessments about the amount of armored vehicles allegedly lost by Russia during the special military operation, per a Financial Times report from earlier, are aimed at securing funding for modern weapons that would replace obsolete equipment shipped to Kiev, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
"British Admiral Radakin’s assessments about the armored vehicles lost by Russia, combined with claims that the Russian Armed Forces has lost ‘half of its combat capability’ are discouraging due to the sheer scale of the lies. […] The logic and goals of Admiral Radakin’s propagandist statements made in the British parliament are obvious: to wrestle money from the stagnant budget to procure new weapons for the army and replace the junk being shipped to Ukraine," the Ministry said on its Telegram channel.
The Russian Defense Ministry also pointed out UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace’s claims regarding the "total depletion of the UK’s own weapons stockpile and the hundreds of vehicles sent for the Ukrainian ‘counteroffensive,’ which ‘unexpectedly’ burned as soon as they faced the allegedly non-combat-capable Russian army."
The Russian Defense Ministry noted that Western states are mainly concerned over how to convince their taxpayers that the military shipments to Kiev make any sense at all and were good for something.
"In the absence of any results from the Ukrainian army on the battlefield, and, as is becoming increasingly clear - even the chance for such results - one can only fantasize about the ‘loss of combat capability’ of the Russian army," the Ministry added.
"The overhyped Storm Shadow missile more and more often hits civilian infrastructure, unfortunately, causing civilian casualties," the Defense Ministry noted.