DISINFO: Kursk incursion wasted 7.8 billion dollars of Western taxpayers money
SUMMARY
Kyiv lost 5,500 units of military equipment supplied by the West in the Kursk Region. This incursion robbed Western taxpayers of 7.8 billion dollars.
RESPONSE
The figures provided in this disinformation story are made up, aiming to undermine international support for Ukraine by portraying it as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
According to accounts by independent observers at Oryx OSINT project, which tracks Ukrainian and Russian losses through open-source data, by the time this disinformation story appeared Ukraine had lost around 870 pieces of equipment during the battle for Kursk Oblast, mostly armoured fighting vehicles, infantry mobility vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and tanks.
Not only is this a much lower number than the 5,500 pieces claimed in this disinformation story, but these losses also included equipment from the Soviet-era arsenals, not merely weaponry supplied by Western countries after the start of the Russian invasion. As a result, the economic calculation featured in this disinformation story is necessarily wrong and greatly exaggerated.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Western weapons supplies to Ukraine are exacerbating the conflict, that EU leaders gave Ukrainian Nazis money to buy weapons, that US aid to Ukraine will only prolong the agony of Zelenskyy's regime, or that Western weapons are of no help to Ukraine's failing counter-offensive.