“Despite international sanctions meant to cripple Russia’s war machine, Russia has maintained an edge over Ukraine when it comes to artillery production and rate of fire.
Over a dozen analysts from the Royal United Services Institute wrote in a new report that Russia’s artillery advantage “is the single greatest determinant of the distribution of casualties and equipment loss, the balance of military initiative, the calculus of what is operationally possible, and thus the political perception of the trajectory of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
Russian artillery is estimated to be responsible for more than 70 percent of Ukraine’s combat casualties.
The analysts at RUSI said that the West needs to disrupt the industries that are keeping Russia’s deadly and destructive howitzers firing before it’s too late for Ukraine.
Russia’s defense industry is growing through new facilities, supply imports, and mass recruitment, the analysts said. They said that, without interruption, Moscow will be better poised to strengthen its position in Ukraine within the next few years.
The report explained that “Russia is self-sufficient in many of its needs, especially in raw materials like iron ore, and may have enough machine tools and stored howitzers from the Soviet era to support its war in Ukraine.”
However, the analysts said, “the longer the war continues, the more Russia’s dependencies on foreign suppliers will become a weakness.”
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“These vulnerabilities include placing sanctions on the supply of essential materials to Russia, preemptive purchasing of raw materials on the open market to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile nations, or putting diplomatic pressure on countries to examine their domestic companies that are exporting goods to Russia.
One example the RUSI report gave was targeting chrome ore imports for barrel production. Another involved hindering the flow of machining equipment into Russia.
The analysts said that Ukraine’s Western partners should immediately prioritize disrupting Russia’s artillery supply chain because doing so for prolonged periods will make it more difficult for Moscow to maintain its howitzers and artillery ammunition.
This is critical for Ukraine. The analysts warned that “left on its current trajectory, Russian fire superiority will increase year-on-year and become less vulnerable to external disruption through pressure on the supply chain.”
The task potentially becomes even more urgent for the West as Russia continues to increase its security ties with China, Iran, and North Korea. The US has publicly expressed concern over Moscow’s deepening military relationships with its rivals and foes over the past few years.
Ukraine has managed to reduce Russia’s long-held artillery advantage and is increasingly taking steps to degrade its stockpiles of shells by using long-range drones to attack ammunition depots inside Russia, but more is needed to break Russia’s edge.”
“North Korea’s provision of weapons has strengthened Russia’s hand in Ukraine by allowing it to keep its arsenals stocked at home, Germany’s top military official said during a visit to South Korea on Monday.
Chief of Defence General Carsten Breuer said Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have reached out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for weapons if they were not useful.
“It’s about increasing the production of weapons for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, it’s also strengthening Russia by making it possible for them to keep their stocks like they are,” Breuer told reporters in the South Korean capital Seoul.
Ukraine and the United States, among other countries and independent analysts, say that Kim is helping Russia in the war against Ukraine by supplying rockets and missiles in return for economic and other military assistance from Moscow.
North Korea has shipped at least 16,500 containers of munitions and related materiel to Russia since September last year, and Russia had launched more than 65 of those missiles at targets in Ukraine, Robert Koepcke, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said in a speech last week.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied direct arms transfers, which would violate United Nations embargoes.”
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that Ukraine’s forces had reported no shortages of artillery shells for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kyiv Independent reported.
“For the first time during the war, none of the brigades complained that there were no artillery shells,” Zelenskyy said on May 16.
According to reports, the refreshed artillery is now helping to blunt Russian advances around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city.
In sharp contrast to battles in January-April, during which the US halted all military assistance to Ukraine, Ukrainian soldier and milblogger Stanislav Osman, author of the popular Hovoryat Snaiper channel, observed that Russian forces attacking in the Kharkiv sector have been facing punishing artillery fire and even attack helicopter strikes, The Kyiv Post reported.”
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“Despite this, Russian artillery will likely outmatch Ukraine’s for most of 2024, officials and analysts told Foreign Policy.”
“For more than two decades, the “rule,” a bit of congressional arcana that few who work outside of Capitol Hill ever pay attention to, was treated as a foregone conclusion and a straight party-line vote. Even if lawmakers planned to break with the party on a bill, they would stay in line on the rule to bring it up, voting “yes” if they were in the majority and “no” for the minority.
But that quaint tradition has fallen by the wayside during this Congress, as rebellious House Republicans have routinely tanked rule votes to exert their leverage and win concessions in a slim majority where they hold outsize power.
“It’s the only tool they have in the toolbox,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. “It’s legal; it’s in the rules.”
When the procedural resistance of the hard right has threatened to scuttle legislation that Democrats consider existential — a bill to defuse the threat of catastrophic debt default, for one, or one to arm a democratic ally facing an invading dictator — they, too, have shown a willingness to break with convention on the rule.
Last year, 52 Democrats voted in favor of the rule to bring up the debt ceiling bill negotiated by the speaker at the time, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden, helping the hamstrung GOP leader push through the measure. In the end, 29 Republicans voted against the rule.
Far-right Republicans have been enraged by the results. After McCarthy struck the debt deal, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said, “We’re going to force him into a monogamous relationship with one or the other,” referring to his cohort of right-wing Republicans or Democrats. “What we’re not going to do is hang out with him for five months and then watch him go jump in the back seat with Hakeem Jeffries and sell the nation out.”
Ultimately, McCarthy ended up in a relationship with no one; Democrats did not vote to save him when Gaetz called a snap vote to oust him and was joined by seven Republicans in voting for him to go.
Johnson is also walking a delicate line. He has to tend to the politics of his own fractured conference without alienating the Democrats whom he will need to pass the security package — and, potentially, to save his job.”
“Russia has started to make steady progress against Ukraine as Kyiv’s forces face dwindling ammunition supplies, much to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s frustration.
“There can be no question, Ukraine could be quickly overwhelmed by both men and arms by odds as great as 10 to 1 within weeks without additional U.S. assistance,” Kenneth Braithwaite, a former ambassador and former Navy secretary during the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital.
“This is a critical juncture in the war and time is of the essence for Congress to act on a comprehensive package,” Braithwaite said. “The fact remains that Putin’s only chance to win in Ukraine is if the West loses our resolve.””
“Because of the problem with American ammunition and the shortage at a really crucial moment when they were making inroads…they haven’t been able to push that much further…most of the marines..spend all their time in the basements hiding from heavy artillery fire.”
“The US has long placed its faith in expensive weapons as the key to victory in conflicts, but the Ukraine war is forcing it to revise its assumptions, The Washington Post has reported.
Stacie Pettyjohn, the director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told the outlet the conflict had challenged long-held ideas that expensive, precision-guided weapons were key to winning US wars.
US-made Himars or Excalibur shells, which are guided to their targets using GPS, have proven vulnerable to Russian electronic-warfare units, which scramble their signals and send them off course.”