Dwindling ammunition stocks pose grave threat to Ukraine
The crew at an artillery position in eastern Ukraine had 33 shells in its ammunition bunker, stacked neatly like firewood against a wall.
Then came an order to fire. Twenty minutes later, smoke wafted around a howitzer, and 17 shells were gone — more than half the crew’s ammunition. The rapidly depleted stack was emblematic of Ukraine’s dwindling supply of artillery munitions, even as Russian attacks persist.
“Artillery decides battles,” said Capt. Vladyslav Slominsky, the artillery commander along this section of the front. “Who has more wins.”
For now, that is Russia, as Ukrainian soldiers are reaching for some of the last ammunition for some types of weapons after months of delays in the U.S. Congress over a fresh round of military and financial assistance. There are signs that the logjam may be breaking, as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA., this week laid out potential conditions for bringing the measure up for a vote that it is expected to pass despite opposition from many conservative Republicans.
The shortfall comes as Ukraine is on the defensive along the 600-mile front line in eastern Ukraine and is building additional fortifications, such as bunkers, trenches and minefields. Artillery ammunition is needed to hold the line until the defensive fortifications are completed and an expected Russian offensive gets underway this summer.
Russia has had an artillery advantage throughout the war, but that edge diminished for a time last year. Estimates vary, but analysts and Ukrainian officials say Russia is now firing at least five times as many artillery rounds as Ukraine. “You cannot expect people to fight without ammunition,” Johan Norberg, a military analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said in a telephone interview. “That’s a basic point.”
Ukraine’s largest single supplier of ammunition was the United States until the latest round of military assistance stalled in Congress. Rep. Mike Turner, R-ohio, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News during the weekend that U.S. military and intelligence officials had made it clear Ukraine could not hold out much longer.
“We are at a critical juncture on the ground that is beginning to be able to impact not only the morale of the Ukrainians that are fighting but also their ability to fight,” Turner said.
On the front lines in
Ukraine, they call it the “shell hunger,” a desperate shortage of munitions that is warping tactics and the types of weapons employed. It is not just the overall lack of ammunition that is so damaging but also an imbalance in the kinds on hand.
A year ago, for example, Ukraine lobbied the United States to supply cluster munitions, often criticized for scattering unexploded bomblets that pose a threat to civilians. As a result, it now has a relative abundance of cluster munitions that are effective against infantry but few of the high-explosive shells that could be more effective against advancing Russian tanks and other armored vehicles, military analysts and Ukrainian soldiers have said.
A shortage of mortar shells that cost about $1,000 each has forced commanders to turn to heavier artillery shells that are in short supply and, at $3,000, far more expensive. And Ukraine has more Nato-caliber shells than Soviet-caliber ones, even as it still fields more Sovietlegacy guns than newly provided Western models. And the heavy reliance on the Western howitzers has sent many back to the repair shop when they are badly needed on the front.
The Russian military has developed relatively effective tactics for storming trench lines in the absence of heavy artillery from the Ukrainian side, pushing forward using large artillery bombardments of its own, human wave attacks with convicts and aviation bombs that can be released while planes are out of range of Ukrainian air defenses.
Before the expected offensive, Russia has replenished its ranks with recruits and conscripts without resorting to a mass mobilization that might prove destabilizing, as was the case in fall 2022.
By last week, Russian forces had advanced toward a key line of trenches and bunkers to the west of the town of Avdiivka, which Russia captured in February. Over the weekend, Russian forces staged one of their largest ground assaults in months on Ukrainian positions in that area, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington group that tracks developments in the conflict.
Forced to cope with what they have, Ukrainian gun crews have to be fast and judicious in their expenditure of shells.
A crew commander, Sgt. Oleksandr Andriyenko, said he received 20 shells a day at his position, compared with 80 shells last summer, when Ukraine mounted a counteroffensive that failed even with relatively abundant supplies.