President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko held talks in St. Petersburg on Sunday. Among the more notable points made by both leaders included the assertion that Russian forces had taken out a record number of Western-supplied armored vehicles over a 24 hour period.
Putin was speaking presumably of the Saturday into Sunday timeframe which immediately preceded the talks with Lukashenko. According to a Russian media summary of the remarks, "Lukashenko, citing his own data, said that Moscow’s forces had taken out at least 15 German-made Leopard tanks and over 20 US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in just one clash."
Putin was in agreement with the statements, but without specifying numbers backed the comments by saying "apparently, [we] have never destroyed so much in one day" while underscoring that Ukrainian forces are "fully equipped with foreign hardware."
In pointing out how "fully equipped" Ukrainian forces are, Putin's suggestion was that the amounts of foreign equipment destroyed will continue to grow.
President Putin also took the opportunity to declare Kiev's counteroffensive as a "failure" - even with strong Western support. He emphasized enemy forces had failed to take back any significant territory:
“Today it’s clear that the Kyiv regime’s Western curators are disappointed with the results of the so-called counteroffensive,” Putin said at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council.
“There are no results, at least not yet,” he told senior government and security officials.
Putin said the diminishing number of Western tanks, artillery, armored vehicles and missiles supplied to Ukraine, as well as “thousands of foreign mercenaries and advisers,” have not helped Kyiv achieve military objectives.
He also said that tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops had been killed since the start of the much-anticipated counteroffensive.
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