As the date for the implementation of the Ukrainian “spring counteroffensive” against Russia approaches, warnings are coming in Kiev about a shortage of artillery and missile ammunition. What threatens its forces, which are under siege in the city of Bakhmut, in the east, and the rest of the fronts.
A researcher in military affairs from Moscow and a political researcher from Poland, to Sky News Arabia, answer questions about whether the lack of ammunition could delay the spring offensive and affect the course of the entire war in the coming weeks..
At the end of February, according to the Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine confirmed its intention to carry out a counter-attack next spring, aimed at restoring the southern regions that Russia controlled in the current war, all the way to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014..
What is behind the severe shortage?
Oleg Artyovsk, a researcher on international affairs at the Russian military institution “Volsk”, explains from his point of view the reasons for this acute shortage and what is behind the Ukrainian insistence on quickly supplying ammunition.:
- Kiev consumes ammunition and weapons greedily and quickly, without organization or arrangement. As a result of the lack of training of its employees from the soldiers and militias.
- Kiev’s reliance on NATO to train its soldiers’ skills in the use of modern Western weapons such as aircraft, tanks and Patriot systems, while most of the weapons on the battlefield are Soviet or of other types..
- The Ukrainian demands for ammunition come at a time when ammunition depots in Europe are running out of weapons.
- Ukraine’s planned spring offensive makes it in dire need of artillery.
Artyovsk lack of ammunition in Ukraine “a failure for Kiev partners“.
President of the Russian Wagner Group: The situation in Bakhmut is very difficult
Hours ago, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmitry Kuleba, renewed his demands for Germany to expedite supplies of ammunition and train Ukrainian pilots on Western combat aircraft..
This came after a European Union official announced that an additional 3.5 billion euros ($3.7 billion) would soon be pumped into the fund used to buy weapons for Ukraine in the near future..
Polish politician and broadcaster Kamil Gil Katie (whose country strongly supports Ukraine) comments that there are now obstacles to the ambition of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to carry out the spring counter-offensive, and to restore the lands “occupied by Russia.”“.
Among these obstacles:
- Ukraine is in urgent need of more than 400,000 shells per month on the open fronts.
- Western stocks are about to run out after more than a year of war.
- The delivery of 155mm artillery shells takes one year from the time they are ordered.
- Kiev is using artillery shells and missiles at a rate far beyond its partners’ ability to manufacture them.
Camille Gil Katy expected that the Ukrainian forces’ need for missile ammunition would increase in the coming months, after Russia recently resorted to the strategy of sending infantry divisions to storm the Ukrainian positions. Which drives it to consume ammunition heavily.
Ukraine’s complaints about the lack of ammunition coincide with a plan developed by the European Union’s foreign policy official, Josep Borrell, that allows the countries of the Union to obtain financial incentives worth one billion euros to send more artillery shells to Kiev, and the Union will allocate another billion euros to finance joint purchases of new missiles.