Up your game, Putin tells Russian defence industry

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday (December 23) that the Russian defence industry has to up its game so that the Russian army gets all it needs to fight in Ukraine. Putin was speaking in Tula, a centre for arms manufacturing.

"The most important key task of our military-industrial complex is to provide our units and frontline forces with everything they need: weapons, equipment, ammunition, and gear in the necessary quantities and of the right quality in the shortest possible timeframes," said Putin.

"It's also important to perfect and significantly improve the technical characteristics of weapons and equipment for our fighters based on the combat experience we have gained."

Putin said this week that the Russian army had to learn from and fix the problems it had suffered from in Ukraine, promising to give it whatever it needed for the war that's nearing the end of its 10th month.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year. After sustained gains in the initial months of the conflict, Russian forces suffered battlefield defeats in light of Ukrainian counterattacks.

Putin has projected the Ukraine war as Russia's pushback against what he terms excessive Western influence in world affairs.

Putin has conceded that a mobilisation campaign to add around 300,000 troops did not go to plan and has ordered shortfalls, which have sometimes included a lack of basic equipment and training, to be urgently addressed.

Russia still controls a significant chunk of Ukraine however, and Putin has said that Moscow will prevail despite fierce Ukrainian resistance and Kyiv receiving billions of dollars of Western weapons along with military intelligence and other help.

(With inputs from agencies)

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