Russian military blogger and former commander Igor Girkin has said that Russia needs China’s help for any success in the war in Ukraine.
The former FSB officer played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass ahead of a full-scale invasion in 2022. He has since repeatedly criticized the Kremlin’s war effort and lambasted his military commanders.
In his latest comments on his Telegram channel, a clip of which Tweeted By Francis Scarr of BBC Monitoring, Girkin said that China is “the only country that can give us a Lend-Lease to continue this war with any level of success.” He said this Lend-Lease needed to include ammunition, shells and artillery propellants “which are in acute shortage.”
Without this cooperation from Beijing, he believes that Russia “will be unable to fight as long as we want to – we may find ourselves naked and barefoot in every sense against the enemy by the middle or end of this year”. Are.” ,
This week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Chinese companies are providing “non-lethal support” to Russia and that they may soon provide “lethal support”. Beijing has rejected the allegations.
Girkin, also known as Strelkov, lamented how Russia’s army had insufficient supplies for battalions of mobilized men and other units and that at some point “we won’t even be able to replace artillery systems that We’ve lost.”
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He also took aim at Russian generals “led by that cretin (Valery) Gerasimov”, referring to the head of the Ukrainian campaign appointed by Vladimir Putin last month. He added that they were “burning and discarding equipment in such quantities that the defense industry will not be able to cope.”
Girkin also stated that 450 armored vehicles were abandoned near Izium, which “compared to German losses at the Battle of Kursk” in reference to the largest tank battle in history in the Soviet Union during World War III. .
On Friday, as the world marked the first anniversary of the battle, Girkin took aim at Putin in a telegram post that blamed his actions amid Russia’s growing troubles on the battlefield.
His post said that the Russian president had an “amazing schizophrenic ability” to start any “business” but not finish it.
newsweek We have contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry and China’s Foreign Ministry for comment.