Ukraine aspires to achieve, with the help of the international community, an impossible “parity” of heavy weapons with the invading Army while it fears that the West will begin to lose interest in the war
The danger in a war manifests itself in a thousand different ways, but for Ukraine its two main fears consist of slowing down the arrival of weapons and that the West loses interest in the war against Russia. Given the imminence of the NATO summit in Madrid and the meeting this Wednesday of defense ministers in Brussels, the president, Volodímir Zelenski, has once again reiterated the need to rearm his country, while his trusted adviser, Mykhailo Podoliak , puts numbers to the requirement: the Ukrainian Army needs some 5,000 pieces of heavy weapons if it wants to have options to push Russia back. The list includes 2,000 armored vehicles, 1,000 155-millimeter howitzers, another thousand drones, 500 tanks and 300 rocket launchers.
Only in this way, says Podoliak, can kyiv hope that local forces reach a certain “parity” with Moscow’s war machine and oppose a firepower intense enough to stop its advance in Donbas. The presidency is trying to get its message across at the imminent meeting of Defense Ministers held this Wednesday in the European capital by the North Atlantic Council, the body that makes political decisions in NATO under the leadership of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Zelensky also wants to take advantage of a visit by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to show solidarity with Ukraine ahead of the G-7 meeting in Bavaria in the coming months. days 26, 27 and 28 of this month.
“We are waiting for a decision,” says Podolyak, with a tone of confidence that is not shared by his entire cabinet. Although a score of countries maintains the commitment to supply first-rate weapons to the former Soviet republic and shipments have already been made, the aspiration to achieve a certain fairness with the invaders is unlikely, if not impossible. The battles in the south and east of the country have revealed Russia’s artillery superiority, which the US intelligence services already had, knowing that it is the real military battering ram of the Kremlin, but not so much other allied countries, which now they face their own difficulties in the supply cycle to kyiv.
To the debate that divides international partners, especially in Europe, on the advisability of sending long-range teams, which can accelerate the spiral of confrontation with Russia, there are material impediments. Comparing it with Russian arsenals is presented as a fight between giants, given the enormous investments that the West would have to make – already beset by its own financial crises – and the time needed to manufacture the weapons and train the Ukrainians in their use. Right now, only the United States shows enough economic and industrial power to continue feeding the Ukrainian troops. In the somewhat longer term, the UK figures in, while other governments scrape together what they can. Norway announced a week ago the delivery of 22 vehicles equipped with self-propelled howitzer platforms and Belgium will send 20,000 artillery shells, previously purchased from the US for a value of 76 million euros.
Italy, for its part, is also a firm commitment to kyiv, although its population is beginning to fragment. A poll carried out earlier this month by ‘Corriere della Sera’ reveals that 44% of Italians are neutral towards the war (six points more than in March), 60% think that NATO is not doing well and more than half reject the shipment of more weapons to Ukraine. Experts attribute it to discontent with the increase in energy bills that politicians attribute to the war. Is it a purely Italian issue? The Ukrainian Defense Minister thinks not. In a recent interview with ‘The Economist’, Oleksiy Reznikov admits that the prolongation of the war takes its toll on politicians, the media and society, as shown by the fact that in Europe the debate between leaders who consider it necessary to continue giving the battle to Russia and those who are committed to strengthening the diplomatic path, In Reznikov’s opinion, this apparent fatigue is evidenced in a slower delivery of weapons. “Either the world does not understand very well what is happening, or it understands perfectly, but is tired and ready to accept the opinion that Ukrainians are dying every day. We need help quickly, “says the minister in the interview.
All these factors complicate the new policy designed by the Zelensky government on stockpile management. If at the beginning of the war and in the siege of kyiv everything was valid – the pistols and machine guns were counted by tens of thousands –, the Army now demands very specific weapons in a type of combat where the popular javelins and portable anti-tank systems are ineffective. They were very useful in the first weeks of the invasion to stop the advance of the ground troops, but their range – from 20 to 600 meters in the case of the anti-tank NLAW, and from 1,000 to 2,5000 in the javenlins – is now deficient in the confrontation with Russian artillery.
Zelensky believes that heavy weapons are late, Ukrainian military circles have always believed that in the first phase of the war, the West preferred to equip soldiers with light weapons due to the characteristics of the fight – urban and guerrilla – but also because of the convinced that the Ukraine would fall in a few days. Under these parameters, the United States and the United Kingdom also supplied numerous anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, very effective against enemy aircraft at low altitude, but impractical with long-distance batteries. Now the Ukrainian Army is learning to use dozens of new weapons. NATO-style 155mm batteries, British multiple missile launchers, M777 guns that fire five shells a minute up to 30km, and kamikaze drones. It is the arsenal that the Government of kyiv dreams of, although, for the time being, many of its operators must resort to Google’s translator to handle them.
#Zelensky #pieces #heavy #weapons #chance #pushing #Russia