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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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A former Russian general said that NATO's artillery is superior to Russia's in a comment at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent boast about his own forces' weapons capabilities.
The Kremlin and its propagandists have framed Putin's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, as a proxy battle between Moscow and the alliance as Kyiv's allies have taken pains to provide military aid without escalating the conflict.
With Russia making regular threats against the West, Putin told a forum in Moscow on February 2 that unlike Soviet-era weapons during the Cold War face-off with NATO, "our latest weapons are clearly superior to everyone else.
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"This is an obvious fact," he said, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
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But Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff between 2004 and 2007 under Putin, seemed to contradict his former boss' assessment.
In a foreword to a book of military-scientific articles titled Algorithms of Fire and Steel, he said that Russian developers of artillery systems are "unfortunately in catch up mode."
"The qualitative superiority of NATO artillery is evident due to the transition to 155-mm guns with a barrel length of 52-caliber, and in the future to 58-60 calibers, and the development of 155-mm long-range shells," Baluyevsky wrote.
He also said that the war in Ukraine has revealed that Russia is facing a "significant" lag in domestic artillery and missile systems whose rearmament Moscow must prioritize in the coming years.
Baluyevsky also said that in the war in Ukraine, air defense had unexpectedly defeated military aviation, which is unable not just to operate on the territory of its enemy but also on its own territory.
"The task of effectively suppressing the enemy's air defense has turned out to be practically unsolvable," he wrote, concluding that reconnaissance, interference, aviation jamming and special combat aircraft to destroy air defenses were needed.
An excerpt of his comments was cited by the Russian publication Army Standard, which is linked to the state military channel Zvezda, and the independent Russian-language outlet Agentstvo.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
The assessment about NATO's capabilities comes as Putin's ally, former President Dmitry Medvedev, took a swipe at what he called "dangerous chatter" among political leaders of the bloc on the chances of war between Moscow and NATO.
In a Telegram post on Wednesday, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council said that the size of NATO's military budget would force Moscow into an "asymmetric" response if hostilities between the sides commenced.
"Ballistic and cruise missiles with special warheads will be used to protect the territorial integrity of our country," he said, which would spell "the end of everything."
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