UPDATE 1-Russia's Medvedev says Moscow to 'significantly' increase arms supplies in 2023
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Feb 2 (Reuters) - Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia's arms suppliers would "significantly" increase their deliveries in 2023 to help its forces inflict a "crushing defeat" on Ukraine.
"Our armed forces regularly receive full supplies of various types of missiles. The delivery of all kinds of military hardware will increase significantly in 2023," Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of the powerful Security Council and oversees a government commission on arms production, said in a post on social media.
Western capitals and military analysts have said Moscow could be running short of some military supplies, having pounded Ukraine with millions of artillery shells and thousands of missiles since it invaded last February.
Officials in Moscow deny those claims and say they have all the resources needed to execute what it calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.
Pictured inspecting missiles during a visit to an arms production factory, Medvedev said fresh supplies would enable Russia to "inflict a crushing defeat on the Ukrainian neo-Nazis who have been fed weapons by a variety of Western scum".
Russia says it is fighting in Ukraine to rid the country of fascist and Nazi sympathisers. That claim is roundly rejected by Kyiv and the West, who say it is a baseless pretext for an illegal war of aggression to seize territory and topple Ukraine's democratically elected pro-Western government.
NATO countries, led by the United States, have supplied billions of dollars of military equipment to Kyiv to help President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's country defend itself.
Once the West's great hope for a rapprochement during his four years as president between 2008 and 2012, Medvedev has emerged as one of Russia's most hawkish pro-war figures during the 11-month conflict. (Reporting by Jake Cordell; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
