Vladimir Putin has admitted that Russia does not have enough weapons for its ongoing war in Ukraine.
The Russia president told pro-war bloggers at a meeting in the Kremlin that “during the course of the special military operation” – Moscow’s name for the war in Ukraine – “it has become clear there are shortages of many things.”
According to state media Interfax, he pointed to a lack of “precision-guided munitions, communications equipment, aircraft, drones and so on”.
Putin said: “We have them, but unfortunately we don’t have enough of them.”
He added: “We had a 2.7-fold increase in production for the main types of weapons over the year, and 10 times for the most demanded areas.”
The president said that “modern anti-tank weapons are needed, and modern tanks are needed”.
This is not surprising, as Western intelligence has been reporting a shortage of weapons on the Russian side for months now, even though production in the country has increased over the last year.
Moscow appears to be relying on Iranian-made Shahed-129s, which are poorly navigated drones, and has been using naval missiles to attack residential buildings.
While Ukraine has a solid influx of tanks (like the British Challenger 2 and German Leopard 2) and equipment coming from its allies, Russia does not appear to have the same level of support.
This is partly down to Western sanctions, too, according to the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies back in April.
It said that the “quality of Russia’s weapons continue to degrade” while Ukraine is improving at the same time.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked for even tougher sanctions on Russia, to further hamper its weapon production which often rely on parts made by Ukrainian allies.
Putin also claimed that Ukraine’s losses in its counter-offensive have been “catastrophic”.
Without any proof to back up his claims, he said Ukraine had lost more than 160 tanks, while Russia had lost just 54, and also alleged Ukraine had personnel losses 10 times greater than Russia’s.
Both sides regularly report on the other’s supposed losses, but – as in all war zones – it’s hard to get any independently verified data on casualties.
Only on Wednesday, Ukraine claimed that Russia had lost 680 soldiers, eight tanks and an air defence system in the last 24 hours.
Interestingly, Putin did reportedly say he was considering a “kind of sanitary zone” on Ukrainian land which would make it impossible for the counteroffensive to “get our territory”, too.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has insisted that “there is movement forward” in Ukraine’s highly-anticipated counteroffensive.
The attack has only just started but claims to have retaken a handful of villages in the eastern Donetsk and south-eastern Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as supposedly advances in Bakhmut.
An anonymous US official told the AP news agency that Putin’s claims about Ukraine’s losses were “not accurate” and that the public should not take his updates about the war seriously.
Away from the frontline, one of Putin’s main remaining allies has also been speaking up about Russian weaponry.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has claimed his country is currently receiving nuclear weapons from Russia which are “three times” stronger than those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two cities to ever be targeted by atomic bombs.
Threatening nuclear rhetoric has been a common theme coming from the Kremlin ever since the war broke out.
Lukashenko recently said Belarus wouldn’t hesitate to use the weapons if it faced aggression, although Russia has repeatedly said it will retain control over the equipment.