Russia Is Hemorrhaging Artillery Systems

Russia's military had lost another 39 artillery systems in the past 24 hours, Ukraine said on Monday, as heavy weapons maintain their place at the forefront of the grinding battle between Moscow and Kyiv in the south and the east of the country.

The Kremlin's fighters have lost a total of 6,299 artillery systems in the long months since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to updated figures from Ukraine's General Staff.

As Ukraine's grinding counteroffensive heads towards the winter months, both militaries "are still locked in an attrition battle," where the importance of destroying the enemy with fire is more important than maneuvers, according to Frederik Mertens, a strategic analyst with the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.

"Artillery is king in such battles and is responsible for most of the losses an army inflicts on its enemy," he told Newsweek.

Around 80 percent of the casualties on both sides of the front lines are down to artillery, Dan Rice, a former adviser to Ukraine's top soldier, General Valery Zaluzhnyi, told Newsweek last week.

Ukraine has also suffered large-scale artillery losses. Moscow said on Monday that Kyiv has lost 6,533 field artillery guns and mortars in the more than 18 months of war. Neither Russia's nor Ukraine's figures can be independently verified, and neither government makes a habit of divulging their own losses.

However, Ukraine has received a steady flow of replacement artillery and ammunition from Western backers. Washington included several different types of artillery rounds in the latest $325 million package of military aid for Kyiv, including 155 mm shells, more dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMS) and ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

Ukraine "has gotten stronger, better, and more experienced" with artillery like the 155 mm howitzers and HIMARS, Rice told Newsweek on Tuesday.

One of the main reasons that Ukraine appears to be taking out more Russian artillery pieces is the supply of cluster munitions to Kyiv in the past few months, said Rice, now president of American University Kyiv.

The U.S. agreed to send dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) in July, after months of debate. Cluster munitions are often hailed by military analysts as an effective weapon, but are controversial because they release multiple smaller bombs, or sub-munitions, over a wide area and can harm civilians long after a conflict ends.

But shifting to cluster munitions from high-explosive rounds "increases the likelihood of destroying an enemy artillery piece exponentially," Rice said, adding: "You are seeing it in what the Russians are calling 'the artillerymen genocide.'"

"Not only are the artillery pieces being destroyed, but the entire professional army of artillerymen," Rice said.

Effective use of artillery has only become more important with Ukraine's counteroffensive heading towards the tougher, muddier, winter months.

"What they're doing is an offensive operation, which is extraordinarily difficult, and to do that, you have to have fires and maneuver," General Mark Milley, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a media briefing at the Ramstein air base in Germany last week.

Ukraine could not move forward without the types of munitions provided in the latest aid package, he said. "They just couldn't do it," he added.

Ukraine, now wielding more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance abilities and indirect fire capability than before, can now likely "hunt down ever dwindling numbers of Russian guns," Mertens said.

In this case, Russia's army will have a real problem on its hands, he argued, "as artillery superiority and enough munitions will allow the Ukrainian army to inflict a hideous exchange rate on the Russians."

However, this would not grant Ukraine an automatic breakthrough, Mertens warned. Russia is thoroughly used to high casualty counts, which could prove enough to "hold ground even against superior artillery," he said.

"Artillery superiority will make it far easier for the Ukrainians to support the combined arms operations that are needed to crack the Russian defensive zone open—which might give that breakthrough that Kyiv is so much looking for," he added.

Ukraine has hailed a series of gains recently, not least when it retook the Russian-controlled town of Robotyne in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, earlier this month.

On Friday, Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Tarnavsky, who leads the country's Tavria operational-strategic group, said Kyiv's troops had achieved a "breakthrough" and continued to advance near Verbove, to the east of Robotyne.

However, the situation on the ground in Verbove "remains unclear amid continued Ukrainian offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 25," Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest update.

One Ukrainian commander told Reuters on Friday that the country's forces "very much rely" on heavy artillery, like self-propelled howitzers, along the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

"Even one gun can completely turn the situation around," he said. "An attack can be stopped with one such gun."

Update 9/26/2023 at 10:53 a.m. ET: This article was updated to clarify a quote from Dan Rice.

Update 8/02/2024 at 5 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct a reference to the Hague Center for Strategic Studies.