- Russia announced it's using the forced labor of convicts to manufacture weaponry.
- Russia has burned through much of its initial supply of tanks and ammunition, per Western estimates.
A British defense intelligence assessment says that Russia is "highly likely" using prison labor in its defense manufacturing as it struggles to keep up with the demands of the war.
"The prison population provides a unique human resource to Russian leaders to utilize in support of the 'special military operation' while willing volunteers remain in short supply," the UK's Ministry of Defence wrote in an intelligence update on Friday, using Russia's euphemism for its invasion of Ukraine.
The UK MOD pointed to reports from late November in which Uralvagonzavod, Russia's sole tank manufacturer, announced it would use the forced labor of 250 convicts from Nizhny Tagil, a remote town 75 miles north of Yekaterinburg.
Russia, which reintroduced forced prison labor in 2017, has a prison population of around 400,000, as well as a system accused of perpetuating "extreme brutality and corruption," the UK MOD said.
Despite its vast initial supply of tanks — the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated it had 12,800 as of April last year — Russia appears to have suffered losses faster than it can replace them.
In November, US officials estimated that Russia had lost half of its main battle tanks since the start of the war. Open-source documentation project Oryx has counted 1621 tanks destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured.
Meanwhile, the Uralvagonzavod factory is capable of manufacturing or upgrading around 20-30 tanks a month, according to the Kyiv Post. It is likely under "intense pressure" to produce more, the UK MOD said.
The UK MOD report follows several signals that Russia, like Ukraine, is grappling with difficulties in keeping its front line supplied with a wide range of munitions.
In September, as international sanctions bit, US intelligence officials said that Russia had turned to North Korea for the supply of millions of artillery shells and rockets, The New York Times reported.
Estonia's intelligence chief Colonel Margo Grosberg told a press conference in November last year that Russia had used up almost two thirds of its ammunition, according to Estonian state broadcaster ERR. And by December, a senior US military official said that Russia had resorted to firing 40-year-old artillery shells from its dwindling stockpile, CNN reported.
While Ukrainian and US estimates differ, both countries have said that the daily rate of artillery fire from Russia has dropped dramatically in recent months — suggesting that Russia is rationing its ammo, CNN reported.
Ukraine is also finding spent Russian missiles that were clearly manufactured in 2022, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense representative Vadym Skibitskyi told Ukrainian broadcaster RBC earlier this month.
This suggests that Russian missiles are going straight from the production line to the front lines, he said.