The inferior arsenals, along with logistical and bureaucratic shortcomings, are pushing Kiev into a war decided by tanks and missiles
For every artillery shell Ukraine makes, Russia produces between twenty and fifty. It also multiplies by twenty the military equipment of the Ukrainian troops. And it has the advantage of not having to waste time on training and bureaucratic procedures related to the arsenals it manages, unlike Kiev with the weapons sent by third countries. These are three of the factors favoring the Kremlin in its new war strategy in Donbas: artillery warfare. A tactic that has been decisive in the last century in the two world wars and which now takes advantage of the weaknesses of the local army to report better results to the Kremlin today than when at the beginning of the war crisis it was a colossal land steamroller that was running day by day. was diluted, bogged down between ambushes and supply problems around Kiev.
You learn from failures, says the US War Institute. In March, Russia suffered its worst failures precisely because of Ukraine’s repeated use of artillery. Now the opposite is happening. Moscow is partly reaping the benefits of its attacks on local army warehouses and logistics routes. An M107 howitzer weighs about 50 pounds. The piece responsible for its launch is capable of firing 40 rounds per hour. In other words, it takes a convoy that can move tons to power a single battery system. Ukraine has lost many of them to enemy bombs precisely because of the lack of security on the routes.
In the current Russian plan, the main role is not played by the infantry. It starts with constant waves of long-range missile air strikes; it continues with closer, more precise bombardments carried out by tanks and cannons, and ends with the intervention – yes – of the infantry units once the area is swept.
Of course, this tactic forces Kiev to attack in the first phase if it is to be effective. The problem is it’s complicated. The screenplay is different. The American spears that symbolized the Ukrainian resistance during the first two months of the war, with more than 5,500 javelins launched against Russian armor, are useless miles away. And the Kiev Ministry of Defense does not have enough fighter jets – most of its air force has been wiped out – and modern artillery. A deficit that also diminishes his ability to provide cover for logistics centers – easily bombed by the Russians – and to protect his trenches. With the exception of recent western shipments, most Ukrainian batteries use Soviet patent ammunition, which is a handicap as these are hardly produced in other countries except Russia. As if that weren’t enough, that ammunition cannot be mounted in the most recent guns.
That is why Volódimir Zelenski returned on Thursday in an eternal rhetoric to ask the West for heavy weapons. He knows this is the key to resistance. You can’t stop claiming them either. If tensions drop and supplies are cut, Ukraine could be defenseless within weeks or even days, at the rate it consumes the West’s resources to withstand the onslaught of Russian artillery. Two examples. The howitzers, which were included in a package of 200 tons of military equipment by Spain on April 28, were completed in two hours of combat. A US supply of 144,000 shells ran out in less than a week.
Zelensky knows that Russia is patient despite its casualties and that it waits for the day when international supplies dwindle, confident that at some point governments will be unable to bear the cost or deplete their armies’ supplies. The Ukrainian president reiterated this Thursday that there is a race against time for this reason, that the heavy arsenal that reaches him is still insufficient, despite the fact that he has pledged more than 2,000 million euros to missile launchers, tanks, howitzers and Grad missiles supplied by countries such as the US, UK, Czech Republic and Poland, and that modern artillery is essential to halt the solid advance of the invading forces from the south.
At the moment, their goal is to prevent the final fall of Severodonetsk. One of the “hardest battles of this war” is being fought in this city because “it will decide the fate of Donbas,” says Zelensky, who hyperbolically believes that the “hatred” generated by Russia is “more deadly than Covid — 19» What the President of Ukraine is trying to say is that only with world-class tanks and missiles will his country be able to take on the difficult task of rebalancing its war power with the Kremlin’s machinery. The front is being consolidated as a large cemetery. Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov acknowledged on Thursday that 100 Ukrainian soldiers are killed and another 500 wounded every day.
“Once we have long-range artillery, we can face the Russian artillery and our special forces can clear the city in two or three days,” said Sergei Gaidai, governor of this region of eastern Ukraine, in line with the hope. from its president. London has promised a multiple MLRS launch vehicle system. Washington, four Himars batteries. Severodonetsk and neighboring Lysychansk are key points in the domain of the Donbas mining area and Ukraine still hopes to reclaim them.
At the end of May, the Ukrainian army showed clear signs in Mariupol of its inferiority compared to Russia’s heavy arsenal. The defeat of the defenders of the Azovstal steel mill after a days-long siege with mortars and tank fire represented the metaphor of the new war tactics the Kremlin is adopting by taking advantage of its superiority in weapons and ammunition. And it is not an easy appreciation, international military media confirm that the main treasure of the Russian armed forces has always been its artillery, superior to that of the rest of the armies of the world.
Kiev fights another battle in the offices. The Zelensky administration’s inexperience before the war and the perception that an invasion was unlikely have led to the Ministry of Defense’s lack of a flexible weapons procurement and management system. Some territorial commanders have to travel from the front to Kiev every time they receive the documentation about the arsenals they receive.
The international community also demands absolute transparency and has put in place strict controls to prevent illegal arms trafficking, a suspicion that has always lingered in the former republic, which last year ranked 122nd among the 180 most corrupt countries in the world. Some experts argue that the executive branch should create a specific office and above all stop dealing with all types of weapons and focus on the most compelling in order to streamline their management.
Source: La Verdad
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