Putin tries to boost decision-making and kit manufacture for Ukraine campaign - Reuters

LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called for more streamlined decision-making in Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, addressing a new Coordination Council designed to boost support for an invasion now in its ninth month.

Putin set up the new council last week as he imposed martial law in four partly-occupied regions of Ukraine that he has declared part of Russia, where his forces have suffered several defeats by a resurgent Ukrainian army.

His comments and those of some of the council members amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that Russia was not fully prepared for the resistance it has met in Ukraine, whose capital Kyiv it failed to seize at the outset of the war in February.

Putin said increased coordination of government institutions and regions was necessary to manage the government's work to produce more equipment for its forces and provide them with better medical and logistical support, though he did not explain in detail how this would work.

"I have discussed many times with many of you the issues related to the need to update all the work to improve administrative procedures," Putin told the Council, made up of members of the government and regional leaders, in televised remarks.

"Administrative reform is impossible without broader coordination between all departments: the economic bloc, the security bloc, the regions."

Even before Putin started a "partial mobilisation" of hundreds of thousands of men last month for the Ukraine campaign, soldiers were complaining on social media of being woefully underequipped. Many have had to buy their own body armour, for instance.

The chairman of the new council, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, told Putin: "We need to intensify work to increase the production of personal protective equipment.

"It is necessary to include all the capacities of light industry, including small enterprises, for the production of military equipment ... We need to make sure that our defenders do not lack equipment."

Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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