Without the mass issue of armament at the beginning of the war, we would have lost Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, — Reznikov
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- Alisa Melik-Adamian
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7:54, 04 September, 2023
Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said that if at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the citizens who joined the TRO had not been given weapons, Ukraine would have lost a number of cities.
He told about this in an interview for Ukrinform.
As you know, 21,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles were issued to people in the capital during the first two days of the war. Now the law enforcement agencies are interested on what basis this happened.
The minister emphasized that if the weapons from Kyiv had not been sent to Mykolaiv, the local authorities would not have been able to restrain the enemy.
— And there will be many more. And they will say: well, he is in power, he is acting badly. No one thinks that it was February 24-25. And the same guys who are being asked now, they took weapons to other cities under bullets and shelling. In Mykolaiv, for example. Ask Vitaly Kim. He will clearly say: if they hadn't brought me machine guns from Kyiv, and I wouldn't have distributed them to the civilian population who went to the TRO, then we wouldn't have held Mykolaiv. If we had not held Mykolaiv, they would have gone to Odessa, and both Odesa and the Black Sea would have already been blocked. And it would be a different picture. And I can give many such examples, — added the Minister of Defense.
We remind, 287 NATO standards were introduced in the Ukrainian army. This is almost a quarter of the total of more than 1,200 standards.