Ukrainian military command: Russia tried to engage its forces from the Donbas in Zapad-2017 exercises
Russia planned to engage forces, which are deployed on the territory of the Donbas, in the Zapad-2017 exercises, stated the spokesperson of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Andriy Lysenko, Radio Liberty reports.
"We can see now that they tried to engage Russian troops in the Donbas in these exercises. We received intelligence data that showed most of the armor units that should have arrived at the staging areas to perform parallel tasks within the framework of Zapad-2017 exercises simply did not reach their destination because for some reason they ran out of fuel. One of the military units in Luhansk had 11 tanks at their disposal. Only three tanks could move and carry out tasks; the others malfunctioned," said Lysenko.
According to him, an analysis of the military equipment of the two army corps of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) and LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic) shows that 60% of their equipment could not be used because of a malfunction.
In a related development, earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania reported that two Russian IL-76 military transport aircraft violated Lithuanian airspace last week. The department noted that this also happened during the joint Russian-Belarusian exercises Zapad-2017.