(Bloomberg) — President Vladimir Putin mentioned Russia has virtually tripled its arms manufacturing to again forces combating in Ukraine, although the army nonetheless lacks enough superior weapons.
“We’ve got elevated manufacturing of the primary sorts of weapons by 2.7 occasions over the yr and by 10 occasions in essentially the most sought-after areas,” Putin mentioned at a televised assembly Tuesday with Russian reporters and struggle bloggers. Nonetheless, “it turned clear that we lack many issues – high-precision ammunition, communications, drones. We’ve got them, however we lack amount,” he mentioned.
Whereas many protection factories had been working round the clock to supply extra weapons, “there may be nonetheless rather a lot we want,” Putin mentioned. “We want fashionable anti-tank weapons, we want fashionable tanks.”
He made the uncommon admission of shortcomings in manufacturing as Ukraine continues its counteroffensive to reclaim territories occupied by Russia. Putin railed in opposition to Ukraine’s US and North Atlantic Treaty Group allies for supplying weapons to the federal government in Kyiv to defend in opposition to the February 2022 invasion, and insisted Russia would obtain its goals.
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He repeated his declare that Ukraine hadn’t been profitable up to now in its counteroffensive, whereas acknowledging that Russia had misplaced 54 tanks in combating. He claimed Russian forces had destroyed 160 Ukrainian tanks and had troop losses near “catastrophic.”
After asserting a partial draft of 300,000 servicemen in September that helped spark an exodus of Russians overseas to keep away from the struggle, Putin mentioned there’s no want for now to order one other mobilization. The military had recruited 156,000 contract servicemen and volunteers for the reason that starting of the yr, he mentioned.
Any choice on additional mobilization would rely “on what targets we set for ourselves,” Putin mentioned.
