Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Tuesday that he might order his troops to try to occupy more land there Ukraine protect Russian border territory, a threat with questionable credibility because the Kremlin does not have full control over areas it has already illegally annexed. In some of his most detailed comments on the war in months, the Russian leader acknowledged shortages of some vital weapons and ammunition, but claimed Ukraine’s recently launched counter-offensive was failing, with Kiev’s forces suffering losses “catastrophes” on the battlefield.
Putin said Russia lacked “high-precision munitions, communications equipment, aircraft, drones, etc.,” although weapons production has increased over the past year in his country.
GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP/Getty
He spoke hours before Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko, one of Putin’s few close allies in the region, said the country in northern Ukraine had begun. the delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons which Putin announced weeks ago would be deployed in Belarus.
Ukraine quickly denied Putin’s claims about its counteroffensive, insisting that progress was being made slowly along the 600-mile front line that stretches from the country’s northern border with Belarus to the Black Sea in its south coast.
Military analysts and U.S. officials describing the counteroffensive to CBS News said Ukraine has not yet committed the bulk of its forces to the new push and is likely still surveying sections of the long front line to determine the weak points for a more concerted attack against the Russian occupation. forces
For weeks, even before the counteroffensive began to gain momentum, Russia’s own territory, including the Moscow Kremlin, has faced drone and small-scale ground attacks, some of which have been claimed by separatist groups Russians aligned in Ukraine. Speaking to a select group of war bloggers and defense journalists in the Kremlin on Tuesday, Putin acknowledged that his forces could have been better prepared for such attacks, and that they were the ones he said he could try to deter by ordering the Russian troops to “create in Ukraine”. territory a kind of sanitary zone at such a distance from which it would be impossible to reach our territory”.
The Russian leader spoke after Ukraine claimed to have recaptured at least seven small villages in the east of the country in recent days. But gains from the Ukrainian counteroffensive have been limited, and both sides have acknowledged the urgent need for more weapons and ammunition.
While Putin claimed his country was ramping up production of the necessary hardware, the US government announced its own latest military aid package for Ukraine — a reduction in existing US supplies worth about $325 million, which will include more armored fighting vehicles and infantry carriers.
Putin announced the destruction and capture of some of the American-made Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles that Ukraine had already seized, mockingly saying that European-supplied tanks “were burning well.”
While Ukraine is eager for more vehicles, tanks and ammunition, CBS News correspondent Ian Lee said Kiev also desperately needs more air defenses, as highlighted by the latest deadly missile and drone salvos.
Russian missiles hit a Ukrainian city for the second night in a row, this time targeting the southern port city of Odesa. Local officials said the only one of four Russian cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea that passed through its air defenses hit a business center and a warehouse, killing at least three people and injuring 13 others.
OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images
Putin made other notable comments in his nearly two-hour discussion with Russian war bloggers and journalists:
He reiterated Russia’s claim that Ukraine was responsible blowing up the Kakhovka dam and the hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River, which caused massive flooding on both sides of the frontline last week in the south of the country, killing at least 17 people. Ukraine says it was Russia that destroyed the dam, which it seized months earlier, “from the inside.” Putin claimed that Ukraine had lost 160 tanks and more than 360 other armored vehicles, while Russia had lost 54 tanks since the new counteroffensive began. Those claims could not be immediately verified, but a U.S. official familiar with U.S. intelligence said Putin’s comments “were not accurate” and warned that there was no value in public assessments of Russia He said Russia’s defense industry had increased production of drones and other weapons but still needed more, and claimed the West was also struggling to produce more weapons and ammunition. Putin threatened that Russia could leave one UN-backed deal to allow grain shipments of Ukraine through a demilitarized Black Sea maritime corridor. He claimed that the US could stop the war by halting arms shipments to Ukraine, leaving it too weak to continue the fight, and suggested that the West would eventually give up the fight and accept that Ukraine could “never” win the war . Month
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