Despite the large influx of weapons from the West, Ukrainian forces are surpassing the Russians in the battle for the area of eastern Donbass, where the fighting is largely conducted through artillery exchanges. While the Russians can hold heavy, continuous fire for hours at a time, defenders can match the enemy with neither weapons nor ammunition and must use their ammunition more prudently. At the outpost in eastern Ukraine, dozens and dozens of mortar shells are stacked. But the commander of the troops, Mykhailo Strebizh, who is the lawmaker of the Gaiduk guerre, lamented that if his fighters fell under a heavy artillery barrier, their hideout would reach, at best, only four hours of reciprocal fire. The Ukrainian authorities say that the long-awaited support of the West to the country is not enough and that it does not reach the battlefield fast enough for this hard and extremely deadly phase of the war. While Russia is silent on the casualties of the war, Ukrainian authorities say up to 200 soldiers are dying every day. Russian forces are slowly gaining ground in the east, but experts say they have suffered heavy casualties. The United States last week raised its biggest pledge of assistance to Ukrainian forces: an additional $ 1 billion in military aid to help repel or reverse Russian origins. However, experts note that such aid deliveries have not kept pace with Ukraine’s needs, in part because the defense industry is not building weapons fast enough. “We are moving from a time of peace to a time of war,” said Francois Heisbourg, a senior fellow at the Paris-based Institute for Strategic Research. “Peace time means low production rates and increasing production rate means you have to build industrial facilities first. “This is a defense-industrial challenge that is very large.” The Kiel Institute for Global Economy in Germany said last week that the United States has fulfilled about half of its military aid commitments to Ukraine and Germany about a third. Poland and Britain have both done much of what they promised. Many infantrymen say they can not even begin to match the Russians who are shooting for a shot or a shell for a shell. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s ambassador to Madrid, Serhii Phoreltsev, thanked Spain – which trumpeted a 200-tonne shipment of military aid in April – but said the ammunition contained was only enough for about two hours of fighting. Fighting Ukrainian director Volodymyr Demchenko posted a video on Twitter expressing gratitude for the weapons sent by the Americans, saying: “They are nice weapons and 120 bullets for each.” But he lamented: “It’s like a 15 minute fight.” Part of the problem, too, is that Ukrainian forces, of which the country was once a member of the Soviet Union, are more familiar with Soviet-era weapons and must first be trained in the NATO equipment they receive. An untold number of Ukrainians have traveled abroad to train in Western weapons. Of the $ 1 billion pledge from the US, just over a third of that will be quick shelf deliveries from the Pentagon and the rest will be available in the long run. The promise, which includes 18 shells and 36,000 rounds of ammunition for them, responds to Ukraine’s call for more large-scale weapons. This is far from what the Ukrainians want – 1,000 155mm shells, 300 multi-launcher missile systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones – as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser Mikhail Podolyak wrote before last week. “What the Ukrainians have to do is carry out what the military tends to call an anti-battery operation” to respond to Russian artillery fire, said Ben Barry, a former British Army chief of staff who is a senior fellow land wars at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “To do this, you need accurate weapons with a high firing rate and range that allows them to keep away from the artillery on the other side.” “The Ukrainians say they do not have enough long-range missiles to adequately suppress Russian artillery,” he said. “I think they are probably right.” As it stands now, Ukrainian fighters often have to use “shoot and kick” tactics – they shoot and then move before the Russians can. Better NATO material, even in small quantities, is often welcome. On a nearby front on Saturday, a Ukrainian unit gave the Associated Press rare access to US-supplied M777 projectiles – 155 mm trailers, weapons – in Russian positions. A lieutenant using the Wasp call sign said the accuracy, speed of fire, simplicity of use and ease of camouflage of the M777, saying the new material “lifts our spirits” and “disgraces the enemy because they see what the consequences are “. Denis Sharapov, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister in charge of procurement, said in a statement from the US-based National Defense Industrial Union that the received weapons systems cover only 10% to 15% of the country’s needs. Note the scope of the challenge – a front line with 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of active combat. In an interview with National Defense magazine in an article published Wednesday, Sharapov said that no supplier could meet Ukraine’s needs alone. “Unfortunately for us, we have become the largest consumer of weapons and ammunition in the world,” he said. Friends of Ukraine dig for a long time. Time may be on the side of Ukraine, experts say. The Ukrainian fighters are both motivated and mobilized – all the men in the country of 40 million have been called to fight, while Russia has so far avoided calling in conscripts, which could greatly tilt the war in Russia’s favor, but it can not to be popular indoors. As for how long such battles could last, analyst Heisbourg said a multi-year war of attrition was “very likely”.
Keaten reported from Geneva. Srdjan Nedeljkovic in Bakhmut, Ukraine contributed to this report.
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