Putin creates new committee to churn out weapons, asks it to think outside the box
The Russian government has to "not hide behind formalities" and speed up the production of weapons and supplies to keep feeding its war in Ukraine, the Russian president urged.
The Russian military's shortfalls in the eight-month war have been so pronounced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had to create a new body to try to address them.
On Tuesday, he chaired a new committee designed to accelerate the production and delivery of weapons and supplies for Russian troops, stressing the need to "gain higher tempo in all areas".
Dubbed "Coordination Council for Meeting the Needs of the Special Military Operation", Putin tasked the body with "everyone to put their minds to meaningful work in the new format" and "resolve all issues faster and more efficiently", Russian state-owned news agency Tass reported on Tuesday.
Putin and Moscow insist on calling Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine "special operation", criminalising calling the act of aggression against its western neighbour war.
Russian news reports have acknowledged that many of those called up under a mobilisation of 300,000 reservists Putin ordered haven't been provided with basic equipment such as medical kits and flak jackets and had to find their own.
Other reports have suggested that Moscow's troops are increasingly forced to use old and sometimes unreliable equipment and that some newly mobilised troops are rushed to the war front with little training.
Last week, Putin tried to show all is well by visiting a training site in Russia where he was shown well-equipped soldiers.
To substitute for increasingly scarce Russian-made long-range precision weapons, Britain's Ministry of Defence said Russia was likely to use a large number of drones to try to penetrate
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