MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has ramped up the production of some military hardware by more than tenfold to supply its army in Ukraine, significantly increasing the output of missiles, drones, combat vehicles and artillery, Russia’s biggest weapons producer said on Tuesday.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered production to be cranked up to ensure Moscow achieves the aims of what he calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine despite the West supplying Kyiv with weapons worth billions of dollars and imposing unprecedented Western sanctions on the Russian economy.
Bekhan Ozdoev, industrial director of the armament complex at Rostec, the Russian state corporation which controls much of the weapons industry, said production volumes for various types of weapons had increased from between two and 10 times.
And for some types of hardware, output had been boosted “by tens of times,” said Ozdoev. “We are going forward at cruising speed, smoke from all the pipes,” he said.
Ozdoev said there had been significant growth in production of tanks, armoured vehicles, rocket launchers, artillery, the Iskander short-range ballistic missile, the Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air missile system and the hypersonic Kinzhal missile.
He did not detail the total volume of weapons produced.
Rostec, which is sanctioned by the West, is run by Sergei Chemezov, a close Putin ally. It controls 800 Russian civilian and defence entities and is by far Russia’s biggest arms producer.
The U.S. Treasury calls Rostec “the cornerstone of Russia’s defense, industrial, technology, and manufacturing sectors.”
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
