Putin's Mobilized Troops Forced to Buy Their Own Equipment, Armor: Ukraine

Alexander Štupun, spokesperson for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops are struggling to obtain equipment and armor as they continue to fight in Ukraine.

"There are significant problems with the material support of the mobilization measures carried out by the military leadership of the Russian Federation. Thus, at the beginning of October, of the 8,000 demobilized persons staying at the base of the Novosibirsk Higher Command School, no more than half were provided with military uniforms," Štupun said in a translated briefing posted to Facebook.

"Only field uniforms and shoes are issued to the specified personnel. The rest of the equipment must be bought at your own expense or try to get it from the local authorities as humanitarian aid. The issue of providing the mobilized with helmets and body armor remains problematic," the spokesperson added.

Štupun also said that the Russian army is suffering losses in south Ukraine in Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, where its military equipment and air defense systems have been destroyed.

Ukrainian troops' successful advances against the Russian army in the south of Ukraine, near an important area that supplies water for Crimea, have posed a threat to Moscow's control of the peninsula it annexed in 2014.

The Ukrainian army has continued to push through the south of the country as it heads to Nova Kakhovka, according to the military blog MilitaryLand.net.

New Voice of Ukraine journalist Euan MacDonald wrote this week that Nova Kakhovka was "an important objective as it's at the head of the canal that supplies Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea with lots of its water."

Despite the success of Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in other regions as well, including eastern Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk, Russia still appears not to admit its losses even after the country's recent announcement of a "partial" mobilization of forces. Some experts think that Putin intends to make the war in Ukraine as long and destructive as possible.

"Putin is showing no sign of reducing his goals, and the people around him are either also completely inflexible, or else they lack the power to change anything," Dmitry Gorenburg of the Center for Naval Analysis told Newsweek. "As long as Putin is in charge, I don't think he will end this, no matter how costly it becomes even for Russia itself."

Last month, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis said that the Russian army's "incompetence" has exceeded expectations in Putin's "special military operation."

"The incompetence of the Russians…has surpassed what I would have expected. They have simply failed to deliver logistics, a decent battle plan [and] competent troops," Stavridis said during an appearance on Sunday TODAY on NBC.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian foreign affairs ministry for comment.