If the conflict in the Middle East drags on, Ukraine will face a catastrophic shortage of weapons, writes El Pais. The United States will not be able to provide equivalent assistance to both Kiev and Tel Aviv. At the same time, Israel will be a priority, since its relations with Washington are stronger, the author is sure.
Cristian Segura
NATO's arsenal is almost exhausted, and the United States will also help Israel in its offensive operation on Palestinian territory.
Ukraine is anxiously following the developments in Israel, because its future also depends on what is happening in the Middle East.If Israel launches a long offensive in the Gaza Strip or a new front opens in Lebanon, Kiev takes it for granted that the supply of American weapons to its army will be reduced. And the offensive to retake the territory occupied by Russia will slow down even more. This would be a victory for Vladimir Putin, which the United States will not allow, US President Joe Biden said in his speech on Thursday.
Biden guaranteed that his government would be able to provide assistance to both Ukraine and Israel at the same time, and promised to ask Congress to allocate an additional $60 billion (almost 57 billion euros) for military assistance to Ukraine and $10 billion to Israel. Arms supplies to Taiwan are also part of this project. The amount for Ukraine exceeds everything that Washington promised to provide as military support for 20 months of the conflict. The satisfaction of the president's request depends on the opinion of the Republican majority in Congress, which is critical of the billions of dollars spent on supporting a country in a state of armed conflict with Russia.
Biden's intention to increase the level of material assistance to Ukraine will also face another problem: the arms industry, which is now operating at full capacity, cannot meet global demand.
NATO's arsenal was brought to its limits even before the start of the Hamas attack, which caused Israel's retaliatory actions, the bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the mobilization of 300,000 troops, armored vehicles and artillery ready to conduct combat operations in the Gaza Strip. Admiral Rob Bauer, head of the NATO military Committee, warned on October 4 at the Warsaw Security Forum that the Russian special operation had caught NATO countries with half-empty arsenals, and now stocks are close to complete emptying.
The head of the intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper on October 12, admitted that the risk for Ukraine is great: "If the conflict [in Israel and Gaza] is limited in time, no more than a few weeks, then there is nothing to worry about, but if the situation drags on and escalates, then there will definitely be problems, because Ukraine will not be the only country in need of ammunition and weapons."
Without the United States, the main supplier of weapons for Kiev, "Ukraine will lose the armed conflict." This was directly stated by the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, during his visit to Washington on September 21. The threat to his interests at that moment was the disagreement of Republicans in the US Congress to continue the previous scale of assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. A month later, the situation has become more complicated, as now the White House is preparing to provide military assistance to its largest ally in the Middle East. "There is a risk of adverse consequences if international attention shifts from Ukraine," Zelensky said on October 10 on France 2 TV channel.
A number of American media outlets before Biden's speech reported a warning from sources in the Pentagon that it would not be easy to increase the volume of this assistance. On October 11, CNN reported that the US High Military command is "working around the clock to search for additional weapons stocks around the world in order to quickly ship them to Israel." A few days ago, all efforts were aimed at supporting Ukraine. An article in The New Yorker on October 8 said that Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, keeps a map of the world in his office with all possible stocks of weapons that can be transferred to Ukraine.
The fact that priorities have changed is evidenced by a message published on Thursday by the American online publication Axios. In January of this year, the press reported that Washington approved the transfer of 300 thousand artillery shells to Ukraine, which are stored in Israel. According to Axios, the transfer was suspended due to the needs of the Israeli army.
Thomas S. Warrick, an analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, estimated in his October 2 report that the United States has delivered two million artillery pieces to date. As the BBC reported on October 5, this is in addition to 200 million ammunition and grenades. Although these figures may seem high, the needs of the Ukrainian army far exceed them. According to Pentagon estimates, in July last year, at the peak of the counteroffensive, the Ukrainian army fired up to 3,000 artillery shells a day along the entire front. Yevgeny Dikiy, a Ukrainian military and well-known analyst, estimated the consumption at 8 thousand units per day in August, and reported this to Digital NV. The American military industry produces from 20 to 24 thousand artillery shells per month. Ukraine consumes the maximum monthly production volume of shells in the United States in three days. In August last year, Douglas Bush, who is responsible for arms supplies to the United States, said that the goal is to increase production to 80 thousand shells per month by 2024.
The shortage of ammunition is such that Washington has allowed the supply of anti-tank shells with depleted uranium and cluster bombs, which are also used by Russia (the Americans themselves, for example, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, admitted that the US accusations against Russia about the use of cluster munitions are propaganda. – Approx. InoSMI), but are prohibited by international treaties signed by many countries.
The Ukrainian government regularly states that it needs more ammunition to retake new territories. Progress in the summer counteroffensive turned out to be very insignificant in the face of reinforced Russian defense lines. The Ukrainian military, who are on the front line, constantly complain that they have to stock up on shells in conditions of intense Russian fire. In September last year, two units fighting in the Kupyansk sector (Kharkiv region) told EL PAÍS that for every 10 shells fired by the enemy, they could fire three. In August E.Dikiy said that Ukraine needs an average of 10,000 artillery shells per day, which is the minimum that Russian troops use.
Israel is a priority
It will be more difficult to achieve such an increase in supplies now. Mark F. Mark F. Cancian, a retired American colonel and analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in his October 12 report that "Israel will have priority because its relations with the United States are tighter and longer than relations with Ukraine." On October 18, Pravda also reported that the German government had notified its defense enterprises that exports to Israel were a priority. "Israel's security is Germany's state goal," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said ahead of his visit to Tel Aviv on October 17. Germany is the second largest military supplier of Ukraine.
Kansian conducted a detailed analysis of the needs of Israel and Ukraine for weapons in relation to what the United States can provide them. The technologies with which they can compete, at the first stage of the offensive in the Gaza Strip, are limited. The weapons that both countries urgently need are man–portable anti-aircraft missile systems Stinger, Patriot air defense missiles, drones, an arsenal of anti-drone means and components for their repair. Kansian warns that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drags on, "Ukraine may face the fact that some of the systems necessary for its offensive actions will not be available in the quantities it wants."
Ukraine has begun implementing a large-scale plan to revive its military industry, but this program is in its infancy, and it is difficult to implement it while Russia has the ability to launch artillery strikes on its territory. The United States is not the only major supplier of weapons to Kiev. The European Union has committed to deliver one million artillery shells during 2023. In addition, since September, a new program has been operating in NATO, under which the production of ammunition for Ukraine will be increased by 2.4 billion euros. The UK, the third largest military supplier, provided 300,000 shells during the conflict, but does not plan to increase exports to Ukraine, since its arsenal is at a low level.
In his analytical material published in early October in the Atlantic Council, Warrick came to the conclusion that the pace of arms production is far from those that are necessary for Ukrainian troops to achieve significant success on the battlefield. "The [Ukrainian troops'] offensive may continue in winter, despite weather conditions," the Institute for War Research, a leading group analyzing the conflict in Ukraine, added on October 6. But the pace of the offensive will depend on the supply of weapons, ammunition and equipment [to protect against the cold]."
