Ukrainian forces achieve milestone in artillery shell delivery

An artillery ammunition shortage that haunted Ukraine’s troops throughout a hard winter’s combat with Russia has been eased, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“For the first time in years of war, none of the brigades complain that there is no artillery shell,” Zelensky told Ukrainian media on Friday. “And this has been happening for the past two months. However, much more work still needs to be done.”

That update points to progress in the delivery of Western military equipment, weeks after Congress authorized President Joe Biden to provide additional U.S. military supplies to Ukraine. It’s a particular boon for Ukrainian troops positioned opposite Russian artillery batteries that were equipped for “firing at least five times as many artillery rounds as Ukraine,” according to an April estimate in the New York Times.

“They’re being shipped vast amounts of ammunition, vast amounts of short-range air defense systems, and significant amounts of armored vehicles right now,” four-star U.S. Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, said on Thursday.

With that assistance, Ukrainian forces have been able to “stabilize the Russians where they are now” near Kharkiv, a major Ukrainian city in the northeastern border region where Russian forces have advanced in recent days.

“The crossing of the border by the Russians is due to a lack of air defense. They operate with aerial bombs and artillery where they have an advantage,” Zelensky said before allowing himself a thinly veiled expression of frustration with the political impasse that caused such a protracted lapse of equipment from the United States. “Eight months of partners delaying decisions made it difficult for our troops.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Moscow has “currently no plans” to take Kharkiv, characterizing the offensive instead as an operation to shield Belgorod, a city on the Russian side of the border, from Ukraine’s attacks.

“They keep targeting the city center and residential areas,” Putin told reporters while traveling in China. “I said it publicly that if it continued like that, we would have to create a safety zone, a kind of sanitary zone. This is what we are doing.”

Still, Ukraine’s top general forecasts “heavy fighting” in the region. Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, said Russian commanders are “trying to force us” to commit more reserve forces into the sector.

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“Under such circumstances, we must prevent the further advance of the enemy troops by steadily maintaining the occupied lines and positions, inflict maximum losses on him with air strikes, missile systems, artillery and tank fire, and also create conditions for defeat by the actions of mobile assault groups and units with attacks on the flank and rear from different directions,” Syrskyi wrote on social media, per an unofficial translation. “Of course, we must make the most of our advantage in attack UAVs in combination with the use of EW and accurate artillery fire.”

Zelensky also cited Ukrainian drones as a key asset, albeit one that is still underfunded. “We are starting to produce a lot of them, but there is not enough money for them,” he said. “We are capable of producing more than there is money.”