© Michael Kappeler/picture alliance /Getty Images
German Army Leopard-2 tank
Cash bounties offered by Russian businesses and officials for the destruction of Western military equipment in Ukraine will inevitably lead to more enthusiasts willing to undertake the task,
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov predicted on Wednesday.
He noted that although heavy Western tanks such as the Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams have yet to be delivered to Kiev's forces, such proposals demonstrated the
"unity and the desire of all" to contribute to reaching the goals of Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine.
Last week, Berlin announced that it would supply Kiev with 14 Leopards and allow other European countries to export their own stocks to Ukraine, amounting to a total of 112 tanks. Washington, meanwhile, has pledged 31 Abrams tanks, but doesn't expect to deliver them until late 2023.
Following the West's decision, the governor of Russia's eastern Zabaikalsky Region, Alexander Osipov, signed an order declaring that
local soldiers participating in the fighting in Ukraine could receive a monetary reward if they managed to seize or destroy a German or American tank.
Comment: Why weren't residents notified? More so considering how understandably worried they would be by the low flying helicopters and because all of this went on past midnight. Did the government also want to take advantage of the opportunity to see how people would react?
This surprise 'close-quarter combat training' session is all the more curious because this isn't the first one to be deployed within a US residential area - it's at least the 3rd time this has happened in California - and again without prior notification to residents. It also comes on the heels of other exercises whereby the military are apparently being trained to become familiar with what deployment in a residential US environment would be like.
One wonders just why the military learning this skill is now being deemed necessary?
Below is a news report of the event with footage of the exercise: