Vladimir Putin has hit back at claims the Kremlin has left Russia’s armed forces fighting without key equipment, saying the war in Ukraine can be funded without “restrictions” and ordering the military to be open to criticism as its full-scale invasion in the country is approaching the 10-month mark.
“The military operation highlighted issues that we need to work on specifically,” including “communications” and “automation,” the Russian president said on Wednesday.
Speaking to Russia’s defense ministry, which has faced unprecedented Kremlin-sanctioned criticism for struggling to supply the front lines and withdrawing from the southeastern regions of Ukraine that Moscow had annexed just weeks earlier, Putin said that Russia has ‘no limits’ on financing the war effort.
Putin’s comments are likely to be the most important prepared remarks a Russian president makes until the new year.
The Kremlin acknowledged earlier on Wednesday that the president would not deliver his annual State of the Union address, even though he is required to do so within a calendar year under Russia’s constitution.
Civil servants such as Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament, and even Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill attended Wednesday’s speech – a highly unusual step designed to mark its significance.
Putin downplayed the impact of the war on Russia’s economy, which is expected to shrink by 3.5 percent – a far shallower decline than expected earlier this year when Western sanctions were first imposed.
He said Russia would not “militarize” its economy because it “doesn’t need to”, insisting it did not want to “repeat the mistakes of the past” when we “destroyed our economy for defensive purposes”.
Despite Western efforts to drain Putin’s war chest, Russia’s budget deficit in 2022 will reach just 2 percent, according to Russia’s finance ministry. That’s something it can easily cover with government borrowing and increased spending from its $187 billion sovereign wealth fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
Seeking to respond to criticism of a supply effort in which soldiers are forced to buy basic equipment such as socks and boots out of their own pockets, Putin insisted that “the country provides everything, everything the army needs,” including “everything , the soldier must be modern, comfortable and reliable”.
Putin called on the Defense Ministry to “listen to criticism and respond to it.”
While in March Russia made “discrediting the armed forces” a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison, the Kremlin has since tacitly endorsed criticism of the military. Lawmakers, state television pundits and prominent bloggers involved on the front lines attacked the military for procurement, logistical and strategic failures.
Speaking about the need to modernize the army, Putin said that Russia “knows everything about NATO’s resources and capabilities and should study it thoroughly and use it to increase its military capacity.”
He pledged to maintain the combat readiness of Russia’s nuclear triad, which can launch missiles from land-based launchers, submarines and strategic aircraft. “This is the main guarantee of our sovereignty and the balance of power in the world,” Putin added.
Speaking immediately after Putin, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian nuclear forces had successfully conducted a special exercise to launch a large-scale nuclear strike “in response to the enemy’s use of weapons of mass destruction.”
“Russia’s nuclear triad is maintained at a level that ensures our ability to implement strategic deterrence,” Shoigu added.
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According to him, Russia should create a new military group in the northwestern part of the country, claiming that this is a response to events in NATO. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden asked to join the alliance.
Shoigu acknowledged that Russia had run into problems trying to mobilize 300,000 people to the front lines in the past two months. It was a “serious challenge” for the country and the armed forces, Shoigu said. “Mobilization has not been introduced since the Great Patriotic War,” he added, using the Russian term for World War II.
“The mobilization system turned out not to be fully adapted to the new economic relations, so we ran into problems,” Shoigu confirmed. There are numerous reports of people being mobilized despite legal immunity from doing so, as well as of equipment shortages, poor training and inadequate accommodation.
The minister said 830,000 people were also exempted from military service to support the economy.
He backed Putin’s line on unlimited resources, saying the funding allowed Russia to increase arms supplies to the military by 30 percent. He also claimed that the Russian military cooperated with 109 countries around the world, despite attempts to isolate Moscow.
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