Russia’s President Vladimir Putin claims over 100 Western tanks have been destroyed since early July as Ukraine’s ongoing counter-offensive struggles to make headway, with the embattled Russian leader claiming “All attempts by the enemy to break through our defenses – and this is their objective, which includes the use of strategic reserves – they have not been successful for the entire time of the offensive.”
Referring specifically to Ukrainian forces and their new Western tanks, Putin said 311 enemy tanks had been destroyed since July 4th, and that “at least a third of them were made in the West, including Leopards.”
He went so far as to claim the Ukrainians often refuse to man Western tanks, as they are “priority targets” for Russian forces – “and they burn just as well as all the others, in fact better than the Soviet T-72 tanks, for instance.”
While his claims are impossible to verify, pro-Ukrainian observers estimated as long ago as early June that around 15 percent of the American-made Bradley fighting vehicles and half the Leopard 2R tanks supplied to Ukraine had already been lost.
A total of 31 American-made M-1 Abrams tanks promised to Ukraine by Joe Biden in January are yet to materialize, though Ukraine insists it has gained some ground during the counter-offensive, while conceding progress has been slow.
