Russian army has suffered significant losses, military reserves of the Russian Federation may be smaller than thought - German Defense Minister

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said this in an interview with Reuters.

"The Russian army has currently suffered significant losses - both in manpower and equipment," Lambrecht said.

"The idea that the Russian forces have virtually unlimited military assets at their disposal is not true," she added and noted that the Russian Federation needs to repair a lot of equipment and it is difficult to recruit a sufficient number of new personnel.

"It will be very interesting to see how big the remaining reserves of the Russian military really are. I think they are much smaller than we probably thought at first," the minister said.

At the same time, however, Lambrecht praised the courage of Russians who publicly criticized Putin, though she said she did not expect such dissent to be enough to bring about Putin's downfall in the short term.

Lambrecht also stated that Berlin is ready to support Kyiv in the long term.