Russian President Vladimir Putin will make an important announcement next week at a meeting at the Ministry of Defense, according to a Russian public station quoted by DPA and Agerpres on Sunday.

“We are waiting for important statements,” Pavlo Sarubin, host of the “Moscow.Kremlin.Putin” program, said on the air of the Russian public radio-television VGTRK.

According to this program, Putin will chair an extended meeting of the Ministry of Defense. Its date is still unknown.

On Monday, the head of the Kremlin is on a visit to Belarus, where he will meet with his ally President Oleksandr Lukashenko in Minsk.

At a cabinet meeting he attended last week, Putin called for Russia’s military-industrial complex to be adjusted to meet the needs of the war against Ukraine that began on February 24, which Moscow continues to call a “special military operation.”

At a meeting next week, he could discuss with military officials new measures to keep the economy afloat as Russian forces in Ukraine continue to face logistical challenges.

These difficulties forced the Russian army in March to withdraw from northern Ukraine, where it had then reached the gates of Kyiv, to concentrate on the eastern and southern fronts. Meanwhile, however, Russian troops were also forced to withdraw from much of northeastern Kharkiv Oblast after a Ukrainian counteroffensive, and then also from the west bank of the Dnipro River in southern Kherson Oblast.

A war of attrition

The Russian army has regrouped in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and is still in control of Kharkiv, consolidating the front line, continuing offensive attempts and minor advances, particularly in the area of ​​the city of Bakhmut, where the heaviest fighting is taking place. But on the whole the front seems frozen in a war of attrition with heavy consumption of munitions and heavy losses in men and equipment, losses which each side minimizes in its own regard and exaggerates the enemy’s losses.

“This war is mostly artillery, and Ukraine needs more guns to be able to stop the Russian offensive and continue its own counteroffensives,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has received significant military aid from the US and EU countries, consisting of ammunition and various types of weapons, such as Javelin or NLAW anti-tank missiles, which played an important role in disrupting the Russian offensive on Kyiv, anti-aircraft systems that hindered Russia gain air superiority, Soviet T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles familiar to the Ukrainian military, or HIMARS multiple-launch systems that allowed the Ukrainian military to engage Russian targets far behind the front lines.

However, this aid has significantly reduced Western stocks, and as for artillery ammunition, it will take 10-15 years to replenish them, warned the owner of a large Czech arms company that participates in the provision of military aid to Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials this week raised the possibility of a new Russian military offensive early next year, when about half of the roughly 300,000 reservists mobilized by Putin in September will have completed their training program. According to the Russian president, 150,000 of them are reservists in the war zone in Ukraine, and about 77,000 of them are taking direct combat part.

As the military campaign in Ukraine unfolds against Russia, the Kremlin has announced that the traditional press conference that Putin attends at the end of each year will not take place this year, as will his speech to the assembled houses of parliament. .

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