Putin Convenes Special Military Meeting Amid Supply Woes

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold the first official meeting of a newly-formed council that seeks to ensure that his military has adequate supplies in Russia's war against Ukraine.

According to state-run news agency Tass, Putin is meeting remotely with the "coordinating council" for military supply and logistics, which he created on October 21 to strengthen the coordination of federal and regional authorities in this area.

The Kremlin's website said the council was established "to meet any needs that arise during the course of the special military operation."

That includes supplies and repair of armament, military and special equipment, materials, medical and sanitary services, maintenance and other activities, and logistics, according to Russian media.

Putin appointed Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin as the council's head, while Dmitry Grigorenko, a deputy prime minister and chief of the government staff, and Denis Manturov, a deputy prime minister and industry and trade minister, will act as Mishustin's deputies.

Mishustin will reportedly give a speech, while the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, is also expected to speak. According to Tass, he has been ordered to coordinate security measures in the city.

On Monday, Mishustin addressed the council at its first meeting and said the group would streamline and handle a number of issues to meet the needs of Russia's military amid the Ukraine war.

He said Grigorenko would be tasked with handling regulatory and financial issues, while Manturov would be in charge of delivering weapons, military hardware, clothing, equipment, and communications devices for Russian soldiers.

Council members were reportedly told to prioritize the security of Russia's critical infrastructure, including energy, transport and telecoms facilities.

The council is expected to report to Putin weekly.

It comes more than a month after Putin announced a partial mobilization in Russia.

On October 14, Putin said that "all mobilization activities" in the country will be completed in about two weeks.

"This work is already coming to an end," Putin said at a press conference in Astana last week. "There are now 222,000 people mobilized in the troop formations, out of 300,000."

"Nothing further is being planned...within the foreseeable future," Putin said.

On August 30, independent Russian defense sector analyst Pavel Luzin wrote in an op-ed for the independent Russian media outlet The Insider that Russia's military is suffering "colossal irreplaceable losses" in both supplies and manpower.

"For Russia, six months of war have led not only to colossal irreplaceable losses in manpower, but also to a huge waste of weapons and military equipment: guided missiles are already very scarce, shells for artillery and armored vehicles will be exhausted by the end of the year, and the state of military aviation precludes a full-scale air campaign," Luzin wrote.

Luzin assessed that if the intensity of the war continues at its current pace, Russia will face a real shortage of shells by the end of the year.

Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analysis, told Newsweek last month that Russia is now making efforts to conserve its stocks of precision-guided munitions.

"Initially, they didn't hold a lot back because they didn't seem to expect the war in Ukraine to last more than two or three weeks, and so they went for a kind of shock and awe strategy thinking they wouldn't have to sustain those kinds of expenditures. Now though, they've started using them more judiciously," said Gorenburg.

Newsweek has reached out to Russia's foreign and defense ministries for comment.