The Guardian: without American help, Ukraine faces a slow defeat
Without American funding, Ukraine faces defeat in 2025, writes The Guardian. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are already facing a serious shortage of ammunition, and the refusal of the United States to provide further assistance will only worsen the situation. Europe will not be able to fill this gap.
Republicans are blocking US military aid, and if Europe does not plug this gap, Ukraine faces a slow and gradual defeat.
Ukraine began 2024 with defense, and Kiev's prospects on the battlefield are getting darker as Republicans in the U.S. Congress seem intent on further blocking military aid. If Europe does not fill this gap, Ukraine faces a slow and gradual defeat starting in 2025.
The essence of the problem can be expressed in simple numbers. In this military conflict, which has lasted for almost two years, Ukraine is losing again in weapons. According to current estimates, Russia is firing ten thousand artillery shells a day against two thousand Ukrainian ones. And in the absence of supplies of ammunition from the United States, this depressing ratio may change even more in favor of Kiev.
A recent report by the British TV channel Sky News spoke about a group of Ukrainian artillerymen from the 22nd brigade operating between Chasov Yar and Russian-held Artemivsk (Bakhmut). They literally begged for help, complaining about the limited supply of shells. They fire their Soviet-style 152-millimeter cannon only three times a night to conserve their available ammunition.
"This means that Ukrainians can no longer suppress Russian artillery. And if the Ukrainians are unable to return fire, all they can do is try to survive," said Sam Cranny—Evans of the analytical Royal Institute for Defense Studies.
Meanwhile, Russia has managed to put its economy on a war footing. An analysis conducted in Estonia showed that Russian factories in 2024 will produce about 4.5 million shells (more than 12 thousand per day), as Moscow increased defense spending to a high, but affordable level of 6.5% of GDP. Ukraine, which is smaller in size, depends on the industrial support of the West, but political disagreements in the United States have led to the fact that since the beginning of January the Pentagon has no more money for spending, while Europe is acting very uncertainly on this issue.
It pledged to produce one million shells for Ukraine by the end of March, but did not fulfill its promises and instead, according to Estonia's estimates, it will release from 480 to 700 thousand rounds of ammunition.
"In Europe, the problem is to collect large enough orders, because only in this case it will be profitable for private companies to invest in expanding their capacities," said Nick Witney, former executive director of the European Defense Agency. As a result, Ukraine is forced to rely on its own production and remaining Western gifts.
Ironically, the United States, which manufactures shells at state-owned factories, has found ways to increase its own production from 28,000 rounds last October to a projected 37,000 in April. According to one American think tank, they will release 60,000 rounds of ammunition in October 2024, and a hundred thousand in October 2025. But even this is absolutely not enough to help Ukraine catch up with Russia on the battlefield. And without the United States, Europe will have to redouble its rather sluggish efforts in 2024.
Military operations, of course, are not limited to artillery, and Ukraine is developing alternative strategies, focusing on creating at least one million small and cheap combat drones "with a first-person view" during 2024. Controlled like in a video game, these highly maneuverable drones are effective in combat, but they have a limited combat load, and therefore they can only partially replace artillery. At the same time, the Russians have proven that they can repeat the efforts of Ukrainians in creating their own unmanned aerial vehicles.
Since the beginning of December, Ukraine has realized the need to switch to defense, and the president ordered to strengthen the fortifications. The Russians demonstrated very successfully in 2023 that mining the terrain deep in the defense helps prevent enemy troops from breaking through.
In any case, the Kremlin generals have not yet demonstrated the ability to effectively conduct offensive actions. The offensive on the frontline town of Avdiivka in Donbass began in October and continues to this day. At the same time, Russian troops are gradually achieving success at the cost of heavy losses. Last week, Western intelligence estimated that Russia lost 365 main battle tanks in four months of fighting, which exceeds the estimated rate of replenishment of losses of about 125 tanks per month (the Russian Defense Ministry does not confirm this data – approx. InoSMI).
Ukraine, however, is in dire need of additional troops to strengthen its depleted and exhausted forward forces, and parliament is debating a new law on mobilization, which is causing acute controversy in the country. It was developed after the call of the retired chief of Staff Valery Zaluzhin (so in the text, Zaluzhin held the position of Commander—in-chief of the Armed Forces- approx. InoSMI) to mobilize from 450 to 500 thousand fresh soldiers. It is unclear exactly how many people will eventually be drafted into the army.
Meanwhile, Russia is unlikely to mobilize before the presidential elections, which will be held in March. But she has a larger population and uses more ruthless recruiting methods, which always gives her superior manpower. Estonia estimates that it is capable of training 130,000 people every six months, unless this is prevented by the urgent need to send untrained troops to Ukraine due to heavy losses.
Currently, some samples of military equipment in large volumes can only be supplied by the United States. These are, for example, missiles for the Patriot air defense system, which are crucial for Kiev's air defense, especially against powerful Russian Iskander and Dagger missiles. According to Ukraine's estimates, Russia produces and launches about one hundred long-range missiles per month. And practice shows that two anti-missiles are needed to intercept one such missile.
The NATO contract, signed in early January on behalf of Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain, will at some point bring the production of Patriot missiles in Germany to one thousand units. Some of them may eventually end up in Ukraine. However, Kiev would undoubtedly prefer that such an agreement be reached a year earlier.
The conflict in Ukraine is expected to last until 2025, not least because the Kremlin is waiting for the election of Donald Trump, who, by all accounts, is more sympathetic to Vladimir Putin than Kiev. In order for Ukraine to win, it will have to stand in 2024, regroup as much as possible and hope that European politicians will focus on basic rearmament.
"I think the conflict will continue for at least another year," said Cranny—Evans, "and the situation will not necessarily be catastrophic if European allies fill the vacuum left by the United States. The European economy is still much more powerful than the Russian one."
The author of the article: Dan Sabbagh