Russia ‘ramping up hi-tech arms’ after copying Western weapons

Putin ally says equipment captured on the battlefield is being ‘turned to our advantage’ by engineers

RUSSIA is expanding defence production and introducing the “latest technologies” in weapons factories, according to an ally of Vladimir Putin.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, yesterday mocked Western intelligence reports that Russia was running short of weapons and ammunition and falling back on Cold War kit.

Instead, he said factories in Russia had boosted their output 10-fold and were improving weapons with hi-tech Western kit captured on the battlefield.

“We are not just expanding production, but also introducing the latest technologies, perfecting them literally ‘on the march’,” he said in the National Defence magazine.

He made the claims as further signs emerged that Moscow is cosying up to Beijing. Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader and close ally of Putin, is to visit China in the coming days amid reports a drone deal may be under way.

Mr Medvedev, deputy head of the Russian Security Council, boasted that Russian engineers and scientists were learning from Western weapons captured in Ukraine.

“We have also studied enemy weapons quite well, which were taken as trophies and dismantled to the last screw at our military construction bureaux,” he said. “We turned the enemy’s experience to our own advantage.”

Despite Western sanctions that are starving Russia of vital microchips, the Kremlin has shifted its economy on to a war footing. Employees at weapons factories work triple shifts and are protected from being mobilised.

There have been reports of shopping centres being turned into munitions factories.

However, the British Ministry of Defence said yesterday that Russia had nearly run out of Iranian drones after 24 were shot down by Ukraine this month.

Rather than manufacturing its own drones, the Kremlin is believed to be looking to China.

Officially, Mr Lukashenko’s three-day trip is aimed at improving relations between Belarus and China.

But analysts point out that Belarus is little more than a Russian vassal state and its leader often acts as an emissary for Mr Putin on his foreign visits.

While Beijing has not officially backed Putin, it has refused to criticise him. Yesterday, China blocked a G20 joint communiqué that would have included a condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine, a decision Germany described as “regrettable”.

Beijing this week offered up a 12-point “peace plan” widely derided by Ukraine’s allies. But Volodomyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, welcomed the initiative and said he would like to meet Xi Jinping.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said yesterday he would visit China in April to urge Beijing to help “put pressure” on Russia to end the war.

Separately, the EU vowed to increase pressure on Moscow “until Ukraine is liberated” as it adopted a tenth package of sanctions on Russia yesterday.

“We now have the most far-reaching sanctions ever – depleting Russia’s war arsenal and biting deep into its economy,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission chief.