New Delhi, Aug. 20 -- Maria Zakharova told her weekly briefing on Thursday that Poland appears to be beginning to regret sending Ukraine more than $4.5bn in weapons, and that Warsaw has received little in return. It is a claim about what another government privately feels, made by the foreign ministry of the country those weapons were used against, and it is worth examining rather than dismissing, because the underlying numbers are real.

Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz put the transfers at 16.4 billion zloty, a figure TASS itself reported at the time and attributed to him. Moscow's headline number in this briefing is Warsaw's published accounting, repeated back.

Poland declassified the fuller picture in July, and the figures ...