Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has stated that Russian military equipment "effectively" counters Western weapons in Ukraine.
Speaking to the heads of Russian defense enterprises on Tuesday, Putin said that the Russian weapons used during Moscow’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine “show high efficiency” and that “first of all it pertains to aviation, long-range high-precision missiles, as well as rocket-artillery and armored vehicles and others.”
He added that these weapons help Russian forces “destroy military infrastructure, command posts and enemy equipment, as well as hit locations of nationalist formations while minimizing losses among Russian personnel [in Ukraine]."
The Russian president recalled that “in fact, all stocks of NATO's arsenals have been thrown in to support the current regime in Kiev.” According to him, Russia should study Western arsenals of weapons used in Ukraine in order to improve domestic military hardware.
“This means that we must and can study them - these arsenals and how they are being used against us. We should qualitatively increase our capabilities and – proceeding from our expertise - improve our military equipment, [and] our weapons, if necessary,” Putin stressed.
Russia launched the special operation in Ukraine on February 24th, with Putin saying at the time that the goal is “to protect people who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.”
He added that to implement the task, it’s necessary to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine and to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for "bloody crimes against civilians" in Donbass.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Russian armed forces, who only destroy Ukraine’s military infrastructure with high-precision weapons, on March 25 completed the main tasks of the operation’s first stage by significantly reducing Kiev’s combat potential.
Putin, for his part, underscored that the ultimate goal of the operation is "the liberation of Donbass and the creation of conditions that would guarantee the security of Russia itself.”