Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that his armed forces lack the military hardware they need to win the war in Ukraine, while insisting Moscow is ramping up weapons production to fill the gap.
Speaking Tuesday at a meeting of pro-war bloggers in the Kremlin, Putin acknowledged that “during the course of the special military operation, it has become clear there are shortages of many things — precision-guided munitions, communications equipment, aircraft, drones and so on.”
“We have them, but unfortunately we don’t have enough of them,” he said, according to state media. As well as drones, “modern anti-tank weapons are needed, and modern tanks are needed.”
At the same time, Putin claimed that there has been a nearly threefold increase in the production of weapons for the battlefield, rising to a tenfold increase for the most in-demand equipment.
Shortages of precision-guided munitions have hampered Moscow’s full-scale invasion, preventing the Russian military from striking strategic targets at a distance. Instead, the country’s forces have unleashed barrages of poorly navigated drones, such as the Iranian-made Shahed-129, and have even resorted to using naval missiles to attack residential buildings.
A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, published in April, found that Western sanctions were preventing Russia from bringing in the components needed to manufacture advanced weaponry. “While the quality of the military equipment used by the Ukrainian army continues to improve thanks to the Western aid, the quality of Russia’s weapons continues to degrade,” the analysis concluded.
Kyiv, in contrast, has received a tranche of Western tanks in recent weeks, including the British Challenger 2 and German Leopard 2.