With the Kremlin increasingly isolated from the international system, supplies are so strained that the Russian president has been reduced to issuing orders to the private sector to repair his broken and battered tanks. This is an admission that Moscow is critically short of the basic equipment and materials needed to fight a war, which in turn shows that it is unable to fight a war the way the West could. Even Moscow has stopped trying to publicly pretend that all is well. “The burden on the Russian defense-industrial complex has increased significantly,” admitted Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov. The new bills spoke of the “short-term increased need to repair weapons and military equipment and secure supplies.” Perhaps most crucially, he admitted for the first time that the impact of the sanctions is beginning to be felt. The new laws are “particularly” important because of Western efforts to cut off the Russian regime, officials said. With Moscow clearly trying to regroup, Kyiv will hope to allow enough time for vital Western weapons to arrive, notably another planned shipment of M142 high-mobility rocket-propelled artillery systems from America that struck at the heart of Russia’s invasion. Experts believe the high-precision Himars launchers, which are able to locate targets up to 300km away using GPS-guided missiles, could help Ukraine turn the tide – but only if deliveries are massively increased. Washington has so far provided four of the weapons, with four more to arrive before the end of the month. Putin has suffered many humiliations in recent months, but an attempted takeover of the industry has to come to a head, including his ridiculous attempts to revive the Muskovich car, a vehicle so terrible it made the humble Lada look like a Maserati. It’s an act of desperation that pushes Russia decades back into the economy of its Soviet past. Most important of all, it is further confirmation of Russia’s self-inflicted demotion from global superpower to third-rate failed state and international pariah.
