Min Aung Hlaing talks tough as Myanmar’s armed forces face growing pressure

Coup leader told troops at annual parade that young people were being ‘tricked’ into joining resistance and claimed foreign interference.

Myanmar’s army chief Min Aung Hlaing has claimed young people are being tricked into supporting the resistance against the military, as anti-coup forces chalk up unprecedented advances.

Three years after seizing power in a coup, the military regime has suffered a series of major losses to an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups and anti-coup forces that launched a surprise offensive at the end of October last year.

Min Aung Hlaing was speaking to thousands of troops who had assembled for Armed Forces Day, the military’s annual show of force.

He said it was “disheartening to witness youths becoming scapegoats of insurgents, misled by false narrative propaganda through media sabotage” and accused unnamed ethnic armed groups of “destroying the path towards forming a union based on democratic values and federalism”.

Min Aung Hlaing claimed the military was “working to restore peace and stability” and there needed to be unity.