Former US military intelligence officer Scott Ritter urged in a media interview not to believe reports that Russia has fewer tanks than its Ukrainian rival does.
He answered the question of whether Ukraine was able to penetrate the Russian defenses, due to the equipment superiority, “Ukraine didn’t even come close to penetration”.
Ritter pointed out that Russia produces more than a hundred modern tanks per month, while Ukraine no longer produces anything and depends entirely on foreign supplies.
“How is it possible to have more tanks than Russia? How many tanks does Ukraine produce? Zero… They get all their tanks from foreign sources, and what happened to foreign tanks on the front lines? They are destroyed… Russia has more tanks than needed,” Ritter said.
In an interview on the “US Tour of Duty” YouTube channel, Ritter confirmed that the Ukrainian military is on the verge of collapse, and predicted that the fighting would stop at the end of the summer due to the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces wouldn’t be able to “endure a conflict of this level”.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that only since June 4, 311 enemy tanks had been destroyed, adding that foreign tanks burn better than Soviet tanks.
Last Thursday, the Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of the Ukrainian counterattack at a slower pace than the United States would like.
In a statement to reporters, Sims responded to a question about the US position on the current results of Kiev’s counterattack, acknowledging that it may not progress as quickly as we would like.
The Ukrainian counterattack began in the southern regions of Donetsk, Bakhmut, and especially Zaporizhia, on June 4, and Kiev has deployed combat platoons trained by NATO and equipped with Western technology, including German Leopard tanks.
