Ukraine Pushes West for More Weapons as NATO Struggles to Refill Supplies

Ukraine is pleading with the West for additional weaponry for what it sees as a "decisive" next phase of the war against Russia. However, the request comes as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are struggling to refill their own arsenals.

In a Thursday address to the European Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked members of the European Union for "more modern weapons, a larger volume of supplies." He said defensive support would be instrumental in the next six months—a critical period he anticipates will demand greater efforts than the past nine and a half months.

"The next six months will be decisive in many respects in the confrontation that Russia started with this aggression," Zelensky said. "Aggression against Ukraine and against each of you, because the final target of Russia is much further than our border and Ukrainian sovereignty."

NATO countries, which include the U.S., have provided some $40 billion in weaponry to Ukraine, according to a November report from The New York Times. The U.S. alone has provided weaponry worth more than $15 billion, including the long-range HIMARS system and Javelin anti-tank missiles. Poland is delivering almost a quarter of Ukraine's supplies from abroad.

"NATO doesn't really plan to fight wars like this, and by that I mean wars with a super intensive use of artillery systems and lots of tank and gun rounds," Frederick Kagan, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, told Foreign Policy last month. "We were never stocked for this kind of war to begin with."

Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Times that the amount of artillery rounds being fired in a single day in Ukraine is comparable to what was being seen over the span of a month or longer in Afghanistan.

The shortage in supplies is becoming an increasing point of concern for the West, but it has also created a challenge for Ukrainian forces who are running out of supplies on the battlefield.

"I think everyone is now sufficiently worried," a NATO official who spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity said. "The relevance of stockpiling is back."

Zelensky has also pushed for greater oversight of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, he said in his nightly address that he's working with the United Nations to try to dispatch international observers to Ukraine's infrastructure sights. He also asked the International Olympic Committee to prohibit Russian and Belarusian athletes from participating in the next Olympic games.

"Since February, 184 Ukrainian athletes have died as a result of Russia's actions," Zelensky told IOC President Thomas Bach, according to a readout from Zelensky's office. "One cannot try to be neutral when the foundations of peaceful life are being destroyed and universal human values are being ignored."