2023-10-04 23:55:11
On Tuesday, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO’s Military Committee and the Atlantic Alliance’s top military official, said “the bottom of the barrel is now visible,” referring to NATO’s ammunition stockpile. West. He did it during his participation in the Warsaw Security Forum, according to the news network CNN.
LOOK: The US Congress did not approve more funds for Ukraine: What can happen now with the war?
“We give weapons systems to Ukraine, which is very good, and ammunition, but not from full warehouses. We started giving away from half-full or lower warehouses in Europe and now those warehouses are running out,” Bauer revealed.
NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Rob Bauer speaks at a press conference at the Holmenkollen Scandic hotel in Oslo, Norway, on September 16, 2023. (Photo by Lise serud / NTB / AFP).
/ LISE ASERUD
At the same forum, James Heappey, Minister of State for the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, argued that although stocks are low, aid to Ukraine must continue and Western countries must increase their capacity to manufacture more ammunition.
“We have to keep Ukraine in the fight tonight and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow… That means continuing to give, day after day, and rebuilding our own reserves,” Heappey said.
For their part, analysts cited by CNN warned that the American “arsenal of democracy” needs to start working overtime or Ukraine’s war effort could be in trouble.
“The United States and its allies are sending Ukraine a wide range of munitions, but they are not being produced or delivered quickly enough,” Thomas Warrick, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote last week.
Warrick added that while Ukraine delayed the start of its summer counteroffensive launched in June to get more ammunition and equipment to the front, Russia was able to build defenses that have significantly mitigated Ukrainian advances in recent months.
“Ukrainian forces have proven to be flexible and adaptable, but they need to have sufficient ammunition and weapons,” Warrick wrote.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg arrives to attend the NATO summit, in Vilnius on July 11, 2023. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
/ LUDOVIC MARIN
Already in February of this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had warned that Ukraine was using a volume of ammunition greater than the production capacity of the military alliance.
“Ukraine’s current rate of ammunition spending is many times higher than our current rate of production. (…) This puts our defense industries under pressure,” Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Brussels.
In tune with the needs of Ukraine, this Wednesday British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asked allied countries to continue supplying weapons to Kiev to “finish the job” and stop the Russian invasion.
“I tell our allies that if we offer the necessary means to President Volydimyr Zelensky, the Ukrainians will finish the job,” Sunak said in a speech on the last day of his party congress in Manchester.
Sunak recalled that the United Kingdom was the first country to supply tanks to the Ukrainian army.
The UK’s Storm Shadow long-range missile. (AFP).
“I am proud to say that we lead the world in providing aid to Ukraine,” he said.
“We were the first country to send battle tanks, opening the door for ten others to follow us. We were the first country to send long-range weapons, followed by France and the United States. We were the first country to train Ukrainian pilots. Now twelve other countries have followed us,” he added.
A Ukrainian gunner from the Aidar battalion holds an artillery shell in a front-line position near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, on April 22, 2023. (Photo by Anatolii STEPANOV / AFP).
/ ANATOLII STEPANOV
United States funds
News of a possible ammunition shortage by NATO allies comes after millions in funds to buy weapons for Ukraine were not included in a stopgap spending bill that the US Congress passed over the weekend. , basically due to opposition from the Republican Party, which controls the House of Representatives.
This Tuesday, after the historic dismissal of Kevin McCarthy as president of the House of Representatives, Joe Biden’s government said it was confident that Congress would continue approving aid to Ukraine.
“No matter what happens in the House of Representatives, the entire leadership of that House supports continuing to help Ukraine, and the vast majority of Republican members are in favor,” the Security spokesman said at a press conference at the White House. National, John Kirby.
He added that those who are against maintaining this support are a “small and vocal minority” of Republican representatives who “do not represent their party or its leadership.”
The HIMARS system delivered by the United States to Ukraine. (AFP).
Before Kirby’s statements, Biden himself spoke with several international leaders, such as the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the president of the European Council, Charles Michel; the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz; and the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to guarantee the commitment of aid to Ukraine.
He also spoke with the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak; with the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg; with the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, and with the French Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna.
It should be noted that the weekend agreement to avoid a federal government shutdown did not take into account the $6 billion budget for Ukraine’s defense industry and for direct budget support, as well as funds for humanitarian projects and energetic.
Aid for Ukraine. (AFP).
How does Ukraine want to stop depending on international aid?
Last Friday, Ukraine almost secretly held its first major international forum of military technology and weapons companies, an event attended by more than 160 firms from 26 countries and in which Kiev sought to promote the joint production of war material with the world leaders in the sector, reported the EFE agency.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participated in the meeting by videoconference. He recalled that many NATO countries have seen their arsenals reduced to help Ukraine with weapons to resist the Russian military invasion. “Now we need to intensify production. Both to cover the needs of Ukraine and to ensure our deterrence and our defense,” he stated.
He also praised the adaptability and creativity of the Ukrainian industry. “From drones to demining, Ukraine has innovated at the speed of light. We all have a lot to learn from Ukraine,” she said.
Stoltenberg pledged to help Ukraine modernize its industry and fully align with technology and transparency standards.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks as he visits wounded Ukrainian soldiers at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City, September 18, 2023. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP).
/ ANGELA WEISS
President Zelensky also sent a message to the participants in the forum. He highlighted the importance of countries that defend international legality having sufficient weapons to defend it.
Zelensky said that one of kyiv’s goals is to “create new weapons production facilities in Ukraine” in cooperation with partner countries and their companies.
“Together we are building the arsenal of the free world,” he said.
The EFE agency highlighted that in anticipation of a long war, and in order not to depend entirely on the weapons sent to it by its allies, Ukraine has been insisting for months on its willingness to develop its own production capabilities in conjunction with the military industries of others. countries.
To this end, Ukraine has already signed agreements to promote joint production with companies from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Opinion
The war of attrition proposed by Russia causes ammunition to run out
By Andrés Gómez de la Torre
Defense issues specialist
Since the beginning of the conflict, Ukrainian Government He complained because the transfer of Western military material did not occur with the required immediacy and opportunity, but this has a logical explanation. The delivery of war material posed an industrial problem to the Allies’ own capabilities, because stocks were evidently depleted, since no one expected a conflict of these characteristics.
Westerners themselves recognize that Ukraine is using the delivered weapons at a very intense rate due to the very characteristics of war, particularly artillery ammunition, which is the core issue.
Furthermore, Western countries have to take care of their own national capabilities, they cannot be left without logistical support for their needs.
For its part, Russia It is playing what it has always known how to do historically: wars of attrition or the so-called protracted wars. Therefore, obviously these Russian techniques they are collapsing the reserves that particularly the countries of the European Union had.
We must also put into context the drop in European military budgets in recent years, something the United States constantly complained about. So, the European military industry is also in a very complicated process due to this unexpected multiplication of demand that this supply crisis has generated.
Another fundamental issue is that Ukraine has too many logistics providers, and this has generated an issue of dispersion that conspires against the operation of its Armed Forces. They are receiving weapons with a technology that they have never had, and this also requires training support.
Now, the shortage of ammunition, particularly artillery, will slow down the possibility of greater offensives or defensive actions by Ukraine, and this will definitely favor the Russian forces.
There must be an internal debate in NATO to see how the allies will repower their military industrial complexes.
The situation of the war in Ukraine as of October 4, 2023. (AFP).
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