Following reports that Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian barge carrying weapons and troops to the border where fighting has intensified, Vladimir Putin is now pleading with weapon manufacturers to ramp up production. Putin’s plea also arrives after the the MOEX Russia Index — “the ruble-denominated benchmark of the Russian stock market” — fell in response to the battlefield losses and troop mobilization. In short, things are not going great for the Russian leader, who is reportedly in danger of being ousted by the country’s wealthy elites.
Via Newsweek:
A video posted by journalist Mary Ilyushina shows Putin meeting with military complex higher-ups on Tuesday. Quoting Putin, she wrote on Twitter that a boost in production is necessary to “urgently” supply the armed forces while ensuring “100% import substitution in this sector.”
It’s a change in tone from just over a month ago, when Putin bragged at the opening of the Army-2022 International Military-Technical Forum and the International Army Games 2022 in Moscow about Russia’s weapons being “decades ahead of their foreign counterparts.”
To illustrate how poorly Russia’s invasion is going, the state-sponsored Kremlin TV has been calling out Putin and calling the war a “serious failure.” The network defiantly aired one propagandist who urged Putin to admit defeat and end the whole thing.
“This is our most serious defeat during the last six months, and the most significant success of our adversary,” political scientist Sergey Mikheyev told Kremlin TV. “Perhaps this failure is beneficial, because being so obvious, now it’s impossible to pull the wool over our eyes, pretending that everything is wonderful.”
(Via Newsweek)