Russia calls Pentagon's plan to issue playing cards for Ukrainian soldiers 'element of psychological war'

Moscow: Russian Foreign Ministry called the Pentagon’s plan to issue playing cards with images of NATO military equipment for Ukrainian troops an “element of psychological war”

“This, unfortunately, is a sad classic of conducting informational psychological wars. They will informatively and psychologically process representatives of the armed forces of Ukraine,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with Sputnik radio.

“The Ukrainian authorities are allowed to “conduct experiments” on the country’s population, and creating playing cards is “only a tiny part of those experiments,” Zakharova was quoted by Anadolu agency as saying.

The statement came after reports surfaced about the Pentagon planning to release a pack of playing cards depicting 52 different NATO weapons systems to help Ukrainian troops recognize the equipment supplied to them on the battlefield.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. Army has come up with a new training tool seemingly designed for the conflict: a set of playing cards with pictures of 52 different NATO-made tanks, armoured personnel carriers, trucks, artillery pieces and other weapons systems, plus two jokers.

The idea is to enable soldiers to quickly identify enemy equipment and distinguish the equipment from friendly forces, Maj. Andrew Harshbarger, a spokesman for the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command quoted by New York Times as saying.

To help forces familiarize themselves with elements of warfare over a hard-fought game of spades, hearts or poker, the Pentagon has issued similar decks in the past with images of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and others to train its personnel for military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, an estimated hundreds of thousands of people have been killed while millions of Ukrainians have reportedly fled and the country.

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