The conflict has turned into an artillery war in which Ukraine stands to lose, according to its Military Intelligence
MADRID, 10 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The ‘number two’ of the Ukrainian military intelligence, Vadim Skibitski, confirmed this Friday that the Army has exhausted its ammunition reserves and depends exclusively on international military aid to defend itself from the Russian invasion.
“This has become an artillery war and we are losing,” Skibitski told the British newspaper The Guardian. “Everything depends right now on the help that the West gives us. We have exhausted almost all our artillery ammunition,” the intelligence officer warned.
Ukraine has ended up firing between 5,000 and 6,000 artillery shells a day, bearing in mind that before the start of the conflict, Russia had an advantage over Ukraine “between 10 and 15 shells to one”. “Our international allies,” she noted, “have given us 10 percent of what Moscow has.”
Ukraine’s main goal is to get the West to supply long-range multi-launch rocket systems to destroy Russian artillery positions as soon as possible and hopes to finalize a proposal ahead of the next NATO contact group meeting on 15 of June.
The Ukrainian government, as presidential adviser Oleksi Arestovich explained this week, needs at least 60 units, far fewer than the international community is willing to commit to fearing that these rockets could end up hitting Russian territory, which would mean a exponential escalation of the conflict.
However, the deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence perceives certain weaknesses in the Russian artillery offensive, which seems to have decreased in intensity in recent days mainly because international sanctions are beginning to take effect and Moscow can no longer replenish its arsenal with the same speed. “They are using very old, Soviet-made H-22 rockets, which shows that they are running out of rockets,” Skibitski said.
Regarding the current state of the combat front, the adviser confirms that the Russian forces are concentrating the vast majority of their attacks in the Donbas region and that the threat to other areas in the northeast, such as Kharkiv — the second city largest in the country — appears to have declined. Russian forces there appear to have moved into a defensive position following a Ukrainian counterattack in May.
In the south, the situation in Zaporizhia and Kherson is extremely serious as the Russians have consolidated their positions in both cities — almost completely occupied — and are digging in with “as many as two and three lines of defense.”
