Russia announces initiative against one of its biggest problems

The complaints from the front have been high for weeks. Now Moscow allegedly wants to increase the production of ammunition “many times over”.

Recently, reports made the rounds that Russia was running out of missiles and ammunition in the Ukraine war. Now the Kremlin seems to be taking countermeasures with a major initiative – or at least wants to give that impression.

According to a report by the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced at a meeting at the headquarters of the Russian armed forces that the production of ammunition had been increased many times over. “These are both conventional and high-precision ammunition,” the agency quoted Schoigu as saying. The defense minister claims that this is how Russia can achieve its war goals.

Ria Nowosti writes that the companies that produce ammunition were previously checked with a view to the “state defense mandate”. Schoigu was informed by the company executives about modernization and expansion plans for their plants.

The statements cannot be independently verified. But one thing is clear: Russia and Ukraine are struggling with ammunition problems. In mid-March, the British Ministry of Defense announced in an intelligence update that Russia was apparently running out of missile supplies and that other products, such as grenades, were also looking bad.

According to the British, Russia is said to have already resorted to old ammunition stocks that had actually been classified as unusable.
Shells are also to be strictly rationed at the front. London sees this “certainly as one of the main reasons” why Russia has recently failed to launch an “operationally significant offensive”.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary unit, has been complaining for weeks about the lack of ammunition and support for his fighters at the front. In an audio message on the Telegram channel “Prigozhin’s press service,” he recently complained that the Defense Ministry was ignoring his calls.

“So that I stop asking for ammunition, all special phones in all offices, in all departments and so on were switched off for me,” says the Wagner boss in the recording. According to Prigozhin, the Wagner Group alone uses 10,000 tons of ammunition per month in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Ukraine is also struggling with a lack of ammunition. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told “Bild am Sonntag” in mid-March that a lack of ammunition was the “number one” problem in the fight against the Russian occupiers. “Germany could really help more with ammunition. With artillery ammunition,” he said.

Shortly thereafter, the EU states agreed to provide Ukraine with one million rounds of artillery ammunition over the next twelve months. According to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, the additional ammunition is to be purchased via existing national framework agreements, but also via a new European procurement project. “We are thus bundling Europe’s market power,” said Pistorius. “It has never existed in this form before.”