(Reuters) – Russia said on Monday that Ukraine’s counteroffensive was not going as planned and that it was wasting billions of dollars of weapons supplied to it by the West.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, in remarks to a military conference, said Ukraine was “desperately hurling new forces” into attacks on Russian positions, but had failed to advance.
Ukraine says it has made gradual progress, though more slowly than it would like, since launching its long-anticipated counteroffensive in early June against well entrenched Russian positions.
After 17 months of war, Ukraine is under pressure to achieve significant gains on the battlefield after taking delivery of Western tanks, rocket systems and other hardware, and to ensure that NATO countries don’t flag in their support.
Russia, for that reason, has repeatedly portrayed the counteroffensive as a failure, even though it is still in its very early stages.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the multi-billion-dollar resources that were transferred by NATO countries to the Kyiv regime are actually being spent inefficiently and aimlessly”.
He said this was why Kyiv was resorting to “acts of desperation” such as a drone attack against Moscow’s business district on Sunday.
Despite Peskov’s comments, the fact that hostile drones have reached the heart of the Russian capital in the past three months, albeit without causing major damage, is uncomfortable for authorities who have told the public that Russia is in full control of what it calls its “special military operation” against Ukraine.
Peskov told reporters that “all possible measures” were being taken in Moscow and elsewhere to protect against similar attacks.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Gareth Jones)
