Mary Ilyushina
Russia has ramped up military production by replenishing stocks of standard weapons and ammunition and probably can sustain its onslaught in Ukraine for at least the next two years, analysts say — a sobering assessment for Kyiv, which is short on weapons and soldiers and losing ground on the battlefield.
While the Kremlin is struggling to expand capacity and to develop modern arms that could improve its army’s battlefield performance, it has capitalized on its overwhelming advantage in numbers of soldiers, its ability to arm them with old but reliable weaponry and a willingness to endure heavy casualties.
By recalibrating its economy on a war footing, forcing existing facilities to work in overdrive to produce or refurbish older equipment, and buying parts from Iran, China and North Korea, Russia has made a surprising recovery from its early losses in Ukraine.
“Russia is not producing more of its modern fighting equipment,” said Nikolai Kulbaka, a Russian economist. “But it has been making a lot more of simpler working equipment, rifles, shells, mass weapons for mass soldiers.”
As Western military aid for Kyiv has slowed in recent months, including in the United States, Russian forces have retaken the initiative in Ukraine, where they can now fire artillery and deploy drones at a far higher rate than the Ukrainians.
Russia has rearmed its forces by refurbishing existing gear — much of it dating to the Soviet era. Replacement parts from China, North Korea and Iran are of inconsistent quality, experts said, but procuring them has demonstrated Moscow’s ability to circumvent sanctions.
The Soviet-era equipment, including missiles and guided aerial bombs, has compensated for Russia’s failure, at least so far, to produce and deploy new, advanced weapons such as the T-14 Armata tank that theoretically could rival the U.S.-made Abrams and German-made Leopards that the West has given Ukraine.