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Anatoly Borodkin: Mr President, Anatoly Borodkin, Zvezda TV channel.
You said earlier that Western countries are flooding the Kiev regime with the most advanced weapons systems.
Vladimir Putin: They are.
Anatoly Borodkin: In this regard, I have a question: what are we going to do to expand our defence industry in order to prevent, first, a lag in terms of quantity and, above all, to overtake the enemy substantially and to provide our Armed Forces with sufficient numbers of modern weapons systems. We are aware that a Coordinating Council has been created. By the way, what do you think about its performance?
Frankly, so far, it appears that we have problems. The supply chain that goes from the defence order, manufacturing application and mass industrial production to shipping products to the frontline is sagging. What needs to be done to make it work as quickly as possible?
Vladimir Putin: You know, this is a fundamental question, absolutely fundamental. When we say – I said it, and you repeated it – that the West is flooding Ukraine with weapons, this is a fact, nobody is hiding this; on the contrary, they are proud of it. By the way, there are some problems here because, to a degree, they are violating certain aspects of international law by supplying weapons to an area of conflict. Yes, yes, yes, they prefer not to pay attention to this, but they are doing it. Never mind, they will keep doing it anyway, and it makes absolutely no sense to reproach them because they have their own geopolitical goals concerning Russia, which they will never attain, never. They must realize that, after all. But I think the awareness of this will come to them little by little.
Regarding weapons and MIC development. You see, we would have had no capability if we hadn’t unveiled and started implementing the MIC upgrade programme about eight years ago – you might recall when it happened. You remember, yes, many of those here must have taken note of it. It was probably about eight years ago, maybe even earlier; we launched a programme to upgrade the military industrial complex. We allocated very large funds at the time, and piece by piece began to upgrade our enterprises, build new ones, deploy modern equipment and so on. Thereby, a very significant back-log was created.
Of course, during the special military operation it has become clear, that we do not have enough of many things. This includes high-precision munitions, communications systems…
Anatoly Borodkin: UAVs.
Vladimir Putin: Yes, and aerial vehicles, drones and so on. We do have them but unfortunately, the numbers are not sufficient. Even now, as I speak with the men on the frontline, they say that they need ZALA drones, counterbattery assets, and more of them, smaller and more effective. Although our big drones are fairly effective, there are not enough of them and they are harder to operate.
I said now that in the areas where the Ukrainian army is trying to attack, several tanks have already been destroyed, I think with kamikaze drones. They are used very effectively, probably more effectively than the enemy’s drones, but we do not have enough of them. We do not have enough Orlan drones, and their quality must be improved, although they perform their function. That is, we need a lot of things. We need modern anti-tank weapons as well as modern tanks.
The Т-90 Breakthrough is the best tank in the world by 100 percent. It is now possible to say the T-90 Breakthrough is the best tank in the world – as soon as it takes its position, there is nothing anyone else can do. It strikes longer and more precisely, and it is better protected. One commander told me – unfortunately the tank man died – but the T-90 Breakthrough was blown up by a land mine. Apparently, it was thrown up, and this man was wounded in it – not by a shell; he was simply thrown around inside, and that was it. The tank remained in working order. That is, there is enough of everything… No, on the contrary, not enough of everything but a lot of the groundwork has been done. Now the task is to build it up.
I mentioned the groundwork, and I should talk about what is happening now. During the year, we increased the production of our main weapons by 2.7 times. As for the manufacture of the most in-demand weapons, we increased this by ten times. Ten times! Some industrial companies work in two shifts and some in three. They practically work day and night and do a very good job.
As we say in such cases, I would like to use this opportunity to thank our labourers and engineers that are working day and night. Many of them go to the frontline to adjust equipment right in the zone of hostilities and do a very good job.
So, when we are talking about one of our main goals – demilitarisation – this is exactly how it is being achieved. They have less and less of their own equipment – almost nothing is left of it. They have some old Soviet plants where they try to repair hardware but the number is constantly decreasing because when we get information on what is taking place and where, we try to deal with it. Meanwhile, our production is growing and the quality is improving. The specifications – the range and precision – are being improved. If we did not have this special military operation we probably would not have understood how to upgrade our defence industry to make our army the best in the world. But we will do this.
Anatoly Borodkin: Thank you.
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AW: Krisenherd Ukraine ab Mai 2023
Zitat von Maitre;[URL="tel:11635371"
11635371[/URL]]Das hätte ich eigentlich gern von amendment gehört. Im Prinzip sind sie vergleichbar, aber auch wieder nicht.
