Russian defense wants missile output doubled
Both sides in war experiencing weapons crunch
KYIV — Russia’s defense chief on Tuesday urged a state company to double its missile output, as a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive looms and both sides in the 14-month war reportedly experience an ammunition crunch.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking at a meeting with top military brass, said the state-owned Tactical Missiles Corporation had been fulfilling its contracts in a timely manner.
But, Shoigu added, “right now it is necessary to double the production of high-precision weapons in the shortest possible time.”
Analysts have been trying to figure out whether Russia is running low on highprecision ammunition, as its missile barrages against
Ukraine have become less frequent and smaller in scale.
The UK Defense Ministry noted in a Tuesday assessment that “logistics problems remain at the heart of Russia’s struggling campaign in Ukraine.”
“Russia does not have enough munitions to achieve success on the offensive,” it said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday described Washington’s latest estimate of Russia’s losses in Ukraine as “spun out of thin air.”
The White House said Monday it now estimated that Russia had suffered 100,000 casualties just since December, including more than 20,000 killed, as Ukraine rebuffed a heavy assault by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US estimate was based on newly declassified American intelligence. He did not explain how the intelligence community derived the number.
“Washington doesn’t have the opportunity to give any correct numbers. They don’t have such data,” Peskov said.
Later Tuesday, the Ukrainian military reported that Russian forces launched 30 airstrikes, three missile strikes, and eight attacks from multiple rocket launchers, resulting in casualties among the civilian population and damage to civilian infrastructure.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Russia was continuing to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks around Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Marinka in the country’s Donetsk province.
The prosecutor’s office in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province reported that Russian shelling in the regional capital, also called Kherson, and several villages killed three people and wounded five.
Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, say they are readying their own counteroffensive — and stockpiling ammunition to sustain it along potentially long supply lines.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Monday that the “key things” for the assault’s success were “the availability of weapons, prepared, trained people, our defenders and defenders who know their plan at their level, as well as providing this offensive with all the necessary things — shells, ammunition, fuel, protection, etc.”
“As of today, we are entering the home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes, everything is ready,’” Reznikov said in televised comments.
In Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders northern Ukraine, an “unidentified explosive device” derailed a freight train, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said Tuesday.
Russian Railways confirmed that “illegal interference” caused 20 cars of the freight train to derail. No casualties were reported.
An explosive device also derailed a freight train in Bryansk on Monday.
There were no immediate indications who set off the explosives, but Bryansk has received sporadic cross-border shelling during the war.