The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has stripped the Western forces of their true colors as to which side they buttress. As if to prove to the world that Ukraine can count on them, the United Kingdom government vowed to support President Volodymyr Zelensky's troops with war weapons including tanks – though it only has 40.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the U.K. chief of the defense staff, revealed on July 5 that his country has "no tanks! They have no army! It was all just bluster!" For the record, the United Kingdom was the first to send tanks and other heavy weaponry into the conflict and it has been the most outspoken among the Western allies regarding supplying Ukraine not only with tanks but most recently warplanes as well. (Related: Russia says it will 'respond accordingly' if UK supplies Ukraine with depleted uranium tank rounds.)
"A Defense Committee meeting in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon heard the U.K. has just 40 tanks and roughly a dozen frigates and destroyers ready for war," one report on Radakin's words underscored. "With the Russian-Ukrainian conflict continuing, military figures are urging for larger stockpiles."
Fight Russia? Britain has just 40 tanks and around a dozen frigates and destroyers ready to go war - the lowest figures in modern times https://t.co/7uscgIkzAC
— KulganofCrydee (@KulganofCrydee) July 5, 2023
According to him, Britain has around 200 on paper. But of these, only 40 are ready to go to war. "We were at 19 frigates and destroyers, which we subsequently reduced to 17 because some of those ships were very expensive," the top defense official admitted. "You've then got some in maintenance and refit so it is probably 11 or 12 which are available to go out on operations." He explained that the armored vehicles that the government has been "investing like crazy" in will only be available at the end of the decade which is why the Armed Forces need to have deeper stockpiles.
As per the DailyMail, the figures are the lowest in modern times and MPs suggest they show the U.K. would struggle to fight a war against Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin's army has been reported to have lost over 2,000 tanks in the conflict but has as many in reserve.
See the video below Dr. Ron Paul's Liberty Report where he talked about the tough-talking U.K. when they only have 40 war tanks.
Radakin: Russia is now "so weak" that it couldn't wage a counteroffensive
Though admitting that they do not have the strongest force when it comes to war tanks, Radakin still undermined Russia's combat effectiveness since invading Ukraine and is now not strong enough to even launch a counteroffensive.
"Russia has lost nearly half the combat effectiveness of its army," he said, according to the Financial Times. "Last year, it fired 10 million artillery shells, but at best, can produce one million shells a year. It has lost 2,500 tanks and, at best, can produce 200 tanks a year."
On the other hand, he defended Ukraine's counteroffensive, which everyone has observed to be slow and not making enough progress. He said that Kyiv's strategy to "starve, stretch, and strike" was gradually eroding Russia's defenses despite Putin's mines, Zelensky's insufficient air defenses and that the lack of equipment Ukraine requested had weighed on operations.
A report from February by the open-source intelligence group Oryx indicated that more than 1,000 Russian tanks had been destroyed in Ukraine while another 500 were captured. A classified U.S. military assessment, leaked earlier this year, suggested that as many as 43,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and another 180,000 wounded since February last year.
Some "experts" speculated that the losses had taken a huge toll, particularly on Russia's elite infantry and armored fighting brigades.
"They've been decimated," Jeffrey Edmonds, a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses who is a former CIA military analyst, told Insider's Jake Epstein earlier this year, describing it as a "blow to Russian's ground force's combat power."
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