Despite Western sanctions restricting its ability to access key parts for weapon building, Russia has managed to ramp up its weapon productions to fuel its war against Ukraine, a new report from a London think tank found.

The Royal United Services Institute's report said: "Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has continued to access critical components from abroad, expanded the production of core weapons, and continued to increase the sophistication of some key capabilities.

Russia has managed to dramatically increase the production of artillery rounds, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones, according to the report.

The report added that cautious decision-making by Western governments and delays in sharing intelligence among Western allies have hampered sanction efforts.

In 2021, prior to the invasion, Moscow produced 56 Kh-101 cruise missiles a year. By last year, it had manufactured 460 cruise missiles, according to the report.

Russia's stock of Iskander ballistic missiles also has dramatically risen from about 50 before the invasion to 180, even as Russia has launched tons of missiles on the battlefield, it said.

To make munitions for missiles and drones, Russia depends on micro-electronics imported from abroad, which Western sanctions have failed to block, the report claims.

The report concluded that Russia's weapons expansion proves that Western sanctions have failed to fulfill its purpose.

"In summary, despite the diligent efforts of many civil servants, backed by the political will to disrupt Russia's military-industrial output, there is little to show for it," it said.

This month, the US Treasury Department announced new sanctions on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, including penalties for foreign banks that do business with Russia as well as restrictions to block the export of certain U.S-made software and IT services to Russia.

The report's authors argue that there are still measures the West can take to choke off supply or prohibitively raise the cost of electronic components, machine tooling and raw materials needed for Russia's weapons production.

It says that governments must share relevant intelligence, including classified information, with each other for export controls and actions to be carried out in timely and effective manner.

It recommended that Western governments form an "intelligence fusion center" that could build "a common recognized target picture of the Russian defense industry."

Better cooperation, including intelligence sharing, would also allow allies to take collective action, ncluding clandestine measures, to undermine Russia's weapons production, the report said.

There are "multiple stages throughout the production process where intervention, both overt and covert, can cause delay, the degradation in quality, or a serious increase in cost to Russia's arms production," the report said.

KYIV — A prominent Ukrainian officer this week accused a top commander of incompetence, blaming him for “thousands” of casualties in a rare public criticism from within the military that reflects growing discontent among the troops as Russia has advanced on the battlefield.

Maj. Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff of the influential Azov Brigade, filed a request to Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation concerning “a military general who in my opinion has killed more Ukrainian soldiers than any Russian general,” he wrote Monday in a post on Telegram.Maj. Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff of the Azov Brigade, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 24, 2023. (Alice Martins for The Washington Post)

Within hours, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he had replaced Lt. Gen. Yuriy Sodol as Ukraine’s Joint Forces’ commander. Sodol is also in charge of the ground forces for the critical section of the front stretching across the eastern Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, and is expected to be removed from that post as well.

The incident is the latest in a series of military leadership shake-ups this year amid Ukraine’s struggles along the 600-mile front line. Sodol had been in the post for just four months after he was installed by Ukrainian military chief Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, whom Zelensky only appointed to the top position earlier this year.

Analysts said Sodol’s swift removal could weaken Syrsky — already widely disliked by rank-and-file soldiers for what they consider to be brutal and old-school tactics reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s army leadership. It also threatens to backfire on Zelensky, who took greater ownership over battlefield decisions when he sacked popular Gen. Valery Zaluzhny in February.

Since Russia invaded more than two years ago, public scrutiny of Ukraine’s military — consistently rated the country’s most trusted institution in polling — has been taboo. And disputes and grievances within the ranks are typically kept private; soldiers who criticize their command could face retribution. Discussion of combat losses are considered a state secret, something Ukraine’s political leadership has chosen to downplay so as to not weaken society’s morale.

Denmark has chosen to stop training Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet pilots on Danish soil after 2024.

The decision was announced by Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen at a joint press conference with his Norwegian counterpart, Bjørn Arild Gram, explaining that Denmark’s fighter jet fleet will soon transition to F-35s.

The new combat aircraft will be deployed at the Skrydstrup Air Base in Vojens, southern Denmark, where Ukrainian pilots are currently being trained.

Poulsen clarified that all 20 trainees will complete their program before the end of the year.

Denmark will continue to contribute to Ukraine’s air training, albeit outside of the country.

Alongside Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands, Denmark has pledged to donate a total of 85 F-16 jets to Kyiv to aid in its ongoing war.

Urgent Training Needed

Ukraine has expressed the need for F-16 training, pressing the US and other international partners to make room for them as Kyiv does not have enough fully-certified pilots to crew a full squadron.

The US F-16 school in Tucson, Arizona, can only accommodate 12 additional trainees, with other countries queuing up for the same curriculum.

Other countries supporting Ukraine’s fighter program include Romania, which has taken eight Ukrainian pilots in preparation for the start of its program.


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The West counts on supplying Ukraine with more and better weapons than a richer, larger, and more populous Russia.

But Ukraine's problem is not so much weapons as manpower. Nearly a fourth of Ukraine's population has fled the country.

Ukraine may have suffered some 300,000 causalities. The average age of its soldiers is over 40 years. It already lacks sufficient forces to replay the failed 2023 counter-offensive. The Russian plan of attrition is to wear down and bleed out the Ukrainian people.

In a geostrategic sense, the new alignment of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea is starting to gain opportunistic support from illiberal Middle East regimes, Turkey, and the Islamic world in general.

The Biden administration's respective approaches to the Ukraine and Gaza wars continue to be utterly incoherent.

It lectures our strongest ally Israel on the need for a ceasefire, proportionality, a coalition wartime cabinet, and the avoidance of collateral damage. The administration considers the terrorist group Hamas almost a legitimate state.

However, Biden and the American diplomatic establishment urge Ukraine to keep fighting without negotiations. They urge Kyiv to seek critical disproportionality through superior weaponry, including hitting strategic targets inside Russia.

The U.S. has overlooked the cancellation of Ukrainian political parties and elections by the Zelenskyy administration. America does not seem to care about Ukrainian collateral damage to the borderlands. And it considers the Russian government a near-terrorist state.

No one in the West, at least prior to the Russian February 2022 invasion -- neither the prior Obama, Trump, and current Biden administrations or the Ukrainian government itself -- had considered it even possible to regain by force Crimea and the Donbass absorbed by the Russian invasion of 2014.

Add up all these realities, and the only practicable way to avoid another near-one million dead and wounded would be a settlement, however unpopular.

It would entail the formalization of the 2014 Russian absorption of Crimea and Donbass.

Russia would then agree to withdraw all its forces to its pre-2022 borders. Ukraine would be fully armed but without NATO membership.

Both sides would agree to a demilitarized zone on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border. Russia would brag that it prevented its former province from joining NATO while finally institutionalizing its prior incorporation of the Donbass and Crimea.

Ukraine would be proud that, like heroic 1940 Finland, it miraculously stopped Russian aggression. It would remain far better armed than at any time in its history and soon enjoy a status similar to that of non-NATO Austria or Switzerland.

The deal would anger all parties. But it would make public what most concede privately -- and stop the ongoing destruction of Ukraine and the further slaughter of an entire generation of Ukrainian and Russian youth.

WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The Biden administration will provide Ukraine with $150 million worth of weapons and ammunition, including HAWK air defense interceptors and 155 millimeter artillery munitions, two U.S. officials said on Friday.
The weapons aid package is expected be unveiled on Monday, the officials said, declining to be named because the package was not public.
The administration is responding to Ukraine's desperate requests for air defense support as Russia has pounded Ukrainian energy facilities in recent weeks via aerial attacks.