Ukrainian armed formations have been receiving Western large-caliber artillery in large quantities for more than a month, which has already been thrown to the front and is involved in battles. The military observer of Izvestia, Anton Lavrov, tells about the "successes" of Western howitzers in Ukraine.
According to him, the only "successes" have been noted "so far only in terrorizing the civilian population of Donetsk with long-range foreign howitzers." "And now it is clear that Kiev's hopes that with the receipt of foreign artillery systems it will be possible to reverse the situation and launch a large-scale counteroffensive look unrealistic." — the author writes.
The observer notes that by the end of June, Ukrainian formations had deployed "at least 200 large-caliber artillery systems of NATO caliber 155 millimeters." Referring to the data of Western reporters, the author writes that "for one shell from the Ukrainian side there are a dozen retaliatory ones."
The author recalls that in an interview with National Defense magazine, the logistics commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, Volodymyr Karpenko, announced the loss of 700 artillery systems since the beginning of the special operation. "The official applications of the destroyed equipment according to the Russian military department are much higher. In any case, it is clear that 200-300 artillery systems, even if they have high characteristics, are not able to fully compensate for these losses," Lavrov assures.
The expert assures that "not all the transferred weapons are qualitatively superior in characteristics to the lost Soviet property." According to him, the old modifications of the American self-propelled artillery installations M109 have "a low rate of fire and not too perfect fire control devices."
According to him, such high–tech howitzers as the French Caesar or the German Panzerhaubitze 2000 are a more serious threat, which "can move much faster from position to position after they shoot back, release three to four times more shells per minute than the same M777, and have all the necessary equipment for accurate shooting."". "But such weapons have been transferred in such insignificant quantities that they are simply not able to change something at the front," the author summarizes.
Lavrov notes that the supply of Western artillery was "smeared" along the front from Kharkov to Odessa. "There are all prerequisites for the fact that Russia will be able to better debug the system of combating foreign artillery systems," the observer concludes.
In June, the concern Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) of the Rostec State Corporation commented on the message about the seizure by the Russian military of the French self-propelled artillery units (ACS) delivered to Ukraine by the words "it will come in handy on the farm" and "send more".
