Vladimir Putin had one of his “strongest public outbursts” last month when he took aim at one of his own ministers over the Ukraine war, according to UK intelligence.
The Russian president has not managed to secure any major victories in the last few months of the war, despite the Kremlin allegedly expecting the conquer the European country within a matter of days back in 2022.
February 24 will mark the one-year anniversary since the brutal conflict began – and Russia is already preparing to launch a renewed offensive.
But, the UK’s ministry of defence has warned that Russia’s “military industrial output is becoming a critical weakness” – which Putin and other senior Russian leaders are “likely” to be aware of.
As the MoD claimed, Putin “castigated” the deputy prime minister Denis Manturov on January 12 in a televised meeting. Manturov is responsible for the defence industry in Russia.
The Russian president allegedly told Manturov off for “fooling around” in what the MoD described as “one of the president’s strongest public outbursts since the invasion”.
Russian forces are said to have been running low on equipment, supplies and morale for months.
So Putin has repeatedly urged the defence industry to offer better support for the “special military operation” – the name the Kremlin insists on using to describe its war in Ukraine.
Then on February 9, the deputy security council chairman Dmitry Medvedev called for an increase in Russian tank production while visiting a construction plant.
Notably, the West has just agreed to send some of its own top tanks to Ukraine to give it an advantage over Russia, which still uses Soviet-era tanks.
But, as the MoD noted: “Senior Russian leaders are likely aware that the state’s military industrial output is becoming a critical weakness, exacerbated by the strategic and operational miscalculation of invading Ukraine.
“Production is almost certainly falling short of the Russian MoD’s demands to resource the Ukraine campaign and restore its longer-term defence requirements.”