Kremlin bizarrely claims Ukraine demilitarization goal ‘largely completed’

On Saturday, Russian officials claimed that Ukraine was in fact demilitarized — in line with Moscow’s goals for an invasion of the Eastern European country — despite clear and significant evidence to the contrary.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly 16 months ago in February 2022 and has lasted much longer than the Kremlin leadership had anticipated. At the start of the conflict, Russia cited a number of justifications that were quickly examined as dubious by experts, including allegations that it sought to “discredit” the Ukrainian government and that Russian speakers were discriminated against in eastern Ukraine.

Another claim repeatedly made by Russia as the invasion proceeded was the need to demilitarize Ukraine. On Saturday, Russia’s state-run news agency, TASS, reported on claims from Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov that Ukraine is effectively demilitarized. The claim struck an odd chord, given that Ukraine has more military hardware than ever thanks to international aid. In an attempt to make the argument, Peskov said the goal is still being achieved because Ukraine is now using less of its own devices.

Indeed, Ukraine was very militarized at the time of its inception [special military operation]Peskov for RT Arabia. [Russian President Vladimir] Yesterday, Putin said, one of the tasks was to disarm Ukraine. In fact, this task has been largely completed. Ukraine uses few of its own weapons. And more and more they use weapon systems supplied by Western countries.

The alleged disarmament target of invading Ukraine came under fire recently from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Putin ally and leader of the Wagner Group, a private paramilitary unit, during a series of critical statements he made about the conflict as his forces pulled out of the war. Bakhmut battlefield.

Prigozhin argued that the invasion had backfired due to the fact that Ukraine was being further armed by its allies in an effort to push back the Russian forces.

“The military special operation was done for the sake of disarming and disarming,” said the Wagner leader. “In terms of disarmament…if they had 500 tanks at the beginning of the special operation, 1687130632 They have 5,000 tanks. If they had 20,000 people who could skillfully fight, now 400,000 know how to fight. How was he disarmed? It turns out that the opposite is true – we camped her hell knows how.

Newsweek Foreign defense experts were reached by email for comment.

Since the beginning of the invasion, Ukraine has received tens of billions of dollars in military aid from Western allies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. According to statistics from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which records data from January 2020 to this past May, the United States alone has supplied Ukraine with tens of thousands of infantry weapons, hundreds of artillery systems, hundreds of tanks, hundreds of armored personnel carriers, and more.