NEW YORK, July 21. /TASS/. Foreign mercenaries who have arrived in Ukraine to fight on the side of the Kiev regime suffer from low morale due to poor command and control and the Russian army’s effective operations, retired US Marine Corps Lieutenant-Colonel Ripley Rawlings told NBC on Thursday.
"The number of people that are upset and have low morale has increased, and that’s partly because of the way the Russians have chosen to fight," he said.
Rawlings who is supplying foreign fighters in Ukraine through his US-based firm Ripley’s Heroes and traveled to Ukraine recently added that "about half of the units that we support have taken terrible hits lately."
The mercenaries are also complaining about the absence of centralized communications and the use of inappropriate tactics by military commanders, the retired US officer said.
Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported earlier on Thursday that Russia’s smart weapons had wiped out around 1,000 militants, among them about 120 foreign mercenaries, on July 16 and 17 in the special military operation in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics for assistance, he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.
In response to Russia’s decision, the West began to impose numerous large-scale sanctions on Russia, stage by stage. Along with this move, Western countries began to supply weapons and military equipment worth billions of US dollars to the Kiev regime. Some Western politicians described the situation as an economic war against Russia.