The Russian army exhibited western military equipment near Moscow, which its troops captured on the front in Ukraine, in order to praise its own weapons and discredit the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive, writes the France Presse agency on Wednesday, whose correspondent visited the exhibition organized in the Patriot Park in the Russian capital. “, where a series of Russian weapons was also presented as part of the Armata-2023 military fair.

“It was abandoned on the battlefield because it broke,” says a Russian commander wearing a military helmet next to an imposing MaxxPro armored personnel carrier, one of several vehicles supplied to Ukraine by the United States. The same commander also presents a British Husky combat vehicle with a bullet-riddled windshield, AFP and Agerpres reported.

Next, another Russian officer gives an interview in front of a French AMX-10 RC light tank. Other “trophies” of the war captured by the Russian military in Ukraine include an Australian Bushmaster armored personnel carrier, an American M-113 armored personnel carrier, another British Bushmaster type, as well as a British Mastiff armored vehicle or a Swedish infantry fighting vehicle. car CV90-40. Various Ukrainian-made military equipment is also presented at the exhibition.

On Wednesday, the ex-president of Russia Dmytro Medvedev, currently the vice-president of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, visited the exhibition. “Is it ceramic? Aha! Advanced technology, it’s worth seeing,” he says, carefully examining the armored vehicle that Australia is offering to Ukraine. Medvedev also noted articles that aim to show the “ideological” upbringing of Ukrainian youth, such as Ukrainian nationalist slogans or emblems of the Azov regiment.

Weapons captured at the front in Ukraine became an attraction of the “Armata-2023” fair, which will last until August 20 with the participation of military delegations from Russia’s “friendly” countries, especially from Africa and Asia, the purpose of which is to popularize the export of Russian weapons.

Thus, the fair presents itself as a communication operation of the Russian military industry and the Russian army. The latter quickly occupied significant Ukrainian territories in the first days of the invasion, which began on February 24, 2022. After the next defeat at the front for the Russian troops, starting with the withdrawal from Kyiv region, then with the loss of most of the northeastern province of Kharkiv region after the lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive and the withdrawal also from the right bank of the Dnipro river in the southern province of Kherson, the Russian army now wants to show that it stands on its feet and that it can defend the territories it occupies in the east and south of Ukraine in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive

Thus, the Kremlin claimed for several weeks that this counteroffensive, launched in early June, had failed, despite the consistent military support given to Kyiv by the West. “Ukraine’s military resources are practically exhausted,” Russian Defense Minister Serhiy Shoigu said on Tuesday.

With the help of this counteroffensive operation, which is carried out in several directions in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, the Ukrainian troops aim to break through the front and reach the Sea of ​​Azov in order to separate the Russian troops and block their land corridor to Crimea. The Ukrainian army has restored a number of villages and part of the territory around the destroyed city of Bakhmut at the cost of significant losses in personnel and equipment, but has not yet been able to achieve serious success against the Russian troops, who have built powerful defensive lines. a network of trenches and minefields.

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