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Russia's reinforcements: Where Putin has found more weapons and troops as Ukraine invasion drags on
Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to source weapons from North Korea and Iran while hiring mercenaries and fighters from Afghanistan and Syria.
International
Russia’s weapon and troop shortage has forced it to turn to other rogue nations and some surprising sources in an effort to sustain its invasion of Ukraine.
Analysts predicted Russia’s invasion would last only days or weeks due to confidence in a superior military force with vast supplies and an overwhelming advantage in manpower, but nine months later, Moscow has looked to source weapons and troops from other countries.
"Russia clearly wasn’t prepared for the nine-month slog that it’s fighting in Ukraine now," Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and a former DIA intelligence officer, told Fox News Digital. "Putin thought that it would be a one- to two-week project, [and] Russian intelligence failed to accurately estimate Zelenskyy's ability to galvanize Western support, Ukrainians’ will to fight, U.S. and Europe’s willingness to provide unprecedented levels of security aid and the Russian forces’ tactical limitations."
Experts previously told Fox News Digital about how "rampant" corruption undermined Russia's military, with oligarchs allegedly pocketing the money instead of investing it in the military over the past thirty years since the Soviet Union collapsed.
And Ukraine bolstered its own supplies with heavy investment from the U.S. and its NATO allies, helping to level the battlefield for months and allowing Ukraine to push Russian forces back. Russian President Vladimir Putin had to withdraw his troops to the eastern border and focus on locking down "rebel" states in Ukraine after failing to take any major strategic target.
But now Russia has started to build its own coalition of allies, even as those allies try to keep their support quiet
"Russia has already fired on the order of 3,000-4,000 missiles in Ukraine, more than expected, with hundreds of missiles launched in the last two weeks targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure to disrupt electricity and water supplies ahead of winter," Koffler explained. She added that "Russia's missile arsenal is almost certainly depleting," and current inventory is "probably" below 40% of pre-war levels.
The U.S. on Wednesday accused North Korea of secretly supplying Russia with artillery shells, and reports over the past month detailed how Iran first supplied Russia with Shahed-136 "kamikaze" drones and then trained Russian troops in their use. New reports indicate that Iran added Mohajer-6 as well as Shahed-129 drones to its shipments.
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby told a virtual briefing that North Korea had attempted to hide the shipments by sending them through countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Reuters reported.