DPR representative denies receiving military hardware from Russia
DONETSK. July 15 (Interfax) - The first deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Andrei Purgin, has denied that Russia has been supplying militias with heavy weaponry.
"We are not getting any heavy weaponry or military hardware. The hardware that we have, including Grads (multiple rocket launchers), were either seized along with the Ukrainian military warehouses or simply abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield," Purgin told Interfax on Tuesday.
He said militiamen were short of heavy weaponry.
"We are catastrophically short of military hardware, including armored vehicles. We have been trying to use whatever we have as intensely as possible, but it true that we have very little hardware. We are not talking about any supplies in principle, we have isolated models of equipment in very small quantities," Purgin said.
He quoted a joke which has recently been circulating on the Internet about the difference between militia's military hardware and that of the Ukrainian Army.
"There are collages on the Internet showing two armored vehicles. One of them has no one on its armor, everyone is inside. The other has clusters of soldiers hung all over it. The second one is ours. This joke is not far from the reality," he said.
