The Russian military is spending ammunition in Ukraine faster than the country's defense industry is producing new ones. This is reported by NBC News with reference to the Director of National Intelligence of the United States, Avril Haynes. She noted that such a situation forces Russia to seek help from other countries, such as North Korea.
Haynes did not give specific numbers, but added: "We believe that they are not able to independently produce what they spend at this stage."
The Joe Biden administration has previously said that Russia has turned to North Korea to secure additional supplies of artillery ammunition. Haynes noted that North Korea's aid appears to be limited, but the intelligence community will continue to keep a close eye on it.
On November 23, the British Ministry of Defense, citing intelligence, reported that Russia was running out of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of Iranian production, which it uses in the war with Ukraine.
Russia has likely launched hundreds of drones since September, using drones against tactical military targets and the Ukrainian power grid, according to intelligence. Recently, however, the Russian command has begun to launch UAVs to compensate for the acute shortage of cruise missiles. The British Ministry of Defense noted that this approach was not successful – most of the launched UAVs were shot down.
After massive rocket attacks by the Russian Federation on Kiev and other cities, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov gave an estimate of the stocks of missiles, according to which Russia used up 87% of the missiles for the Iskander OTRK.