Newsweek: Ukraine Has Obvious Advantage In War Against Russia
- 24.11.2023, 9:45
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Ukraine retains a clear advantage in the artillery war against Russia, whose forces were more numerous and better supplied at the start of the full-scale invasion. But with all the supposed modernisation, the Russian 'god of war' in the form of artillery has become muted against the systems the Defence Forces now have.
Ukrainian artillery and UAV groups are hunting for large calibre guns as well as the occupiers' multiple rocket launchers (MLRS), which perform a similar function at shorter ranges. Therefore, as of today, the artillery of the Russian army is exhausted, the Newsweek piece said.
Analysts noted that from September to November 2023, the AFU destroyed 2272 artillery systems and 167 MLRS of the enemy. For the same period in 2022, the figure was 789 and 108 respectively.
"This is a really big problem for the Russians. It's not just a cliché, it's not Ukrainian 'propaganda'. For the last five months, Russia has been very active in using old-style artillery. Not of the late Soviet era, but of the mid-50s and 60s - towed artillery like D30 and D20 howitzers with a maximum range of 15-18 km," commented Ivan Stupak, a former SSU officer and now an adviser to the Verkhovna Rada committee on national security, defence and intelligence.
According to him, this is a very short range, for example, compared to the Swedish Archer SPG in the AFU, which has a range of 30-60 kilometres, depending on the projectile. Stupak emphasised that Russian artillery stocks are completely exhausted, the occupiers are using the available systems "because they have no other choice".
The publication noted that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is switching the country's economy to a military basis, but ramping up production of spare parts for artillery is a difficult task and depends in part on Western technology, to which Moscow now has limited access.
Newsweek said the Kremlin's problem is only becoming more pressing as Western advanced munitions arrive in Ukraine. So they say the summer and autumn increase in the number of reported destroyed Russian artillery systems coincided with the arrival of cluster munitions for the Ukrainian armed forces.
"Now Ukraine also has in its hands variants of cluster munitions of the MGM-140 long-range rocket system known as ATACMS, launched by HIMARS. Ukrainian gunners are helped by increasingly sophisticated counter-battery radars used to detect Russian guns firing quickly," the analysts said.
Dan Rice, an American combat veteran who used to be a special adviser to the AFU Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny, is of the same opinion. He noted that the Ukrainians now have "fire superiority" over the Russians, as well as more advanced and effective weapons systems.
"The full-scale deployment of cluster artillery shells and missiles has opened a new phase of war. This is why Putin offers 'peace talks' and calls it a 'tragedy.' Now Moscow has to fight deep strikes against large concentrations of its troops and any kind of artillery or MLRS," Rice said.
However, experts agree that the two sides will need a lot more ammunition to keep fighting.
"Kyiv has a lot of problems with the delivery of artillery shells from European countries ... We were promised about 1 million shells, but so far we have only about 300,000. Russia got a million shells from North Korea, Iran, and is trying to re-buy them from different countries where it had previously supplied itself," ex-SSU officer Ivan Stupak stated.