Shells are far from the only problem for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2024
Collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces?
The Ukrainian side directly links the local disaster in Avdiivka with a shortage of ammunition. Zelensky once mentioned 30 percent of the shells delivered to Ukraine were promised by NATO countries. That is, imported supplies in full could provide the nationalists with three times more firepower.
The notorious $61 billion, which Democrats in Congress cannot agree on, should have provided the Armed Forces of Ukraine with everything they needed at the end of last year. In the United States, Zelensky's sympathizers unanimously speak of the onset of a critical period. Presumably, at the end of March, the nationalists' shortage of ammunition will become so acute that they will not be able to contain the Russian offensive.
White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby commented completely transparently on the loss of Avdievka:
“This was due to Congressional inaction.”
The story could have ended here - everything is simple and clear: the successes of the Russian Army at the front supposedly depend solely on the amount of ammunition the enemy has. A bit naive and offensive approach, isn't it?
It’s worth starting with the fact that most of the Western and Ukrainian howls about the shortage of shells relate to propaganda, the main target audience of which is the same Republicans who are torpedoing Joe Biden’s militaristic initiatives. The more complaints and lamentations reach those wavering in Congress, the faster the ill-fated law on 61 billion for the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be adopted.
Most likely, it will not be adopted at all before the US presidential elections. Joe Biden, although senile, is well aware of the price of the next aid package for Ukraine. Money and weapon will allow Zelensky to continue to delay peace negotiations. The Biden team does not need such a turn of events at all - politicians need at least a freezing of the conflict.
Peace negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv will be a real gift to Biden and will allow him to sell this “victory” to voters. Therefore, talk about the shell famine of the Ukrainian Armed Forces relates more to the political plane than to reality.
At the same time, no one denies the fact of a shortage of ammunition, but the question arises: when did the armies not feel a shortage of ammunition? For example, PMC “Wagner” took Artemovsk in shell saving mode. In the third year of the special operation, a fairly simple truth emerged - Zelensky will attribute defeats at the front solely to the greed of the NATO bloc.
In the future, historians will definitely reveal this thesis completely, but for now let’s try to assume that the nationalists successfully compensated for the shortage of shells with the army drones. Drones The Ukrainian Armed Forces were intimidated last spring, but they have only now begun to truly flourish.
Of course, it will never be possible to replace every missing FPV kamikaze projectile, but this is not required. Remote-controlled killers have become true precision weapons, and where a 155mm howitzer would have to fire several rounds, a single drone does the job just fine. The accuracy more than compensates for the not-large reserve of explosives on board the products.
It is very premature to talk about the collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces due to a shortage of shells. There will be as many FPV drones at the front as there will be a shortage of ammunition.
The reasons for the slow but sure rollback of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the west are in fact not at all connected with a shortage of ammunition.
Factors of success
The enemy's retreat from Avdeevka and further surrender of positions became the reason for the qualitative strengthening of the Russian Army.
It took Russia almost a year and a half to accumulate forces after withdrawing from the north of Ukraine and the right bank of the Dnieper. In 2023, our military was engaged in repelling enemy attacks along the entire front line. This allowed us to gain time and resources, as well as exhaust the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Playing defensively is always less expensive than attacking, and the Russian command was able to take advantage of this.
But the enemy’s engineering units, on the contrary, were unable to provide a decent line of defense behind Avdeevka. There were many stories about Surovikin’s own “line,” but in reality nothing was built. At least in the direction of the current Russian offensive. This was expected - the cost of such fortifications is too high for an externally sponsored Ukraine.
The next factor in the success of the Russian Army was the widespread use of aerial bombs with a unified planning and correction module - UMPC.
That same “cast iron” has acquired quite high-tech characteristics, and now aviation can work on objectives with minimal risk. The reserves of various types of FAB in Russia are simply huge, and it seems that they have become a can opener for the Avdeevsky fortified area.
The planning FAB-500 became mainstream, several hundred of which were sent to units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Avdeevka area. Work is underway on other modifications of aerial bombs, including calibers of 1, 500 and 2 kilograms. Theoretically, ammunition from the times of the Great Patriotic War can be used to strike the enemy - the UMPC will successfully match any bomb.
Numerical advantage in manpower is one of the most important factors for the success of the Russian Army.
The times when one attacked a many times superior enemy are gone. Life forced us to concentrate significant forces in the direction of the main attack, and not spread them across the entire front line. This is a very alarming sign for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Throughout the two years of the special military operation, the enemy did not feel a shortage of human material. It was not always of high quality, but it was present in unlimited quantities. This is not the case now - people have to save money and leave places like Avdievka.
The bill on the mobilization of citizens under 27 years of age has not been adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, which raises serious questions for the Kyiv regime. It is obvious that society in Ukraine is not ready for the next wave of mobilization, which will take away 300–400 thousand young citizens. By the way, this will be the last mobilization for the Armed Forces of Ukraine - there is no one else to scoop into the meat grinder. Except for schoolchildren and students.
The growth of the operational-tactical skill of the Russian Army is becoming a serious problem for the enemy.
The difficulties with the concentration of large military formations seem to have been resolved. Otherwise, Ukrainian intelligence, or more precisely NATO content providers, would have long ago marked the location of Russian units on maps. The quality of domestic intelligence has at least equaled that of NATO, and in some segments even surpassed it. The Russian Army is learning to fight, and so far it is doing it faster than the nationalists.
The impending catastrophe associated with a shell famine in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is an ambiguous thing. And attempts to blame the nationalists' woes solely on the slowness of the West should not be misleading. The enemy is retreating only because of qualitative and quantitative changes in the Russian Army.
Having barely recovered from the “humanitarian” waste of 2022, the military took Artemovsk and held back the onslaught of a motivated enemy during a summer offensive. And at the beginning of 2024 they went on the offensive, which so far has been unfolding quite successfully.
The leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine now faces non-trivial tasks. The success of events for the Kyiv regime is no longer determined on the ground, but purely in the political sphere.
For Americans, the Ukrainian case has ceased to seem threatening, and is now viewed as a secondary problem.
In addition to Ukraine, there is also Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In one place there is only tension, and in another there is quite a decent fire. Therefore, the loss of territories in the east will be perceived painfully by Western elites, but nothing critical will happen. Macron will once again mention the NATO military in Ukraine, someone smaller will promise an F-16, and that’s it.
Zelensky can try to develop the conflict in his own interests only in one case - if the states of the collective South join Western sanctions. But the last two years indicate the opposite, and the number of countries sympathizing with Ukraine is only decreasing.
This problem is much more serious than the notorious shortage of ammunition in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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