The potential addition of Patriot missile defense batteries to Ukraine’s arsenal comes as Kyiv and Moscow both face a critical question with the war in its 10th month: Can they secure enough missiles and artillery through winter to prevail?
A combination of cold, but still wet weather and Russian consolidation along defensive lines has slowed advances by either side on Ukraine’s battlefields, but not the war’s intensity. The conflict continues to churn through limited reserves of troops and munitions at a frightening pace.
The big worry now for Russia this winter is to avoid ceding more territory to Ukrainian counter-offensives, according to three people close to the Kremlin and the Russian defense ministry. They cited concerns that the supply of ammunition and weapons has been too slow to ensure Russia’s forces hold their ground.
Which side runs low first could decide whether Ukraine or Russia emerges in the spring with the strategic initiative to potentially end the war on its terms.
The two sides have at times fired in excess of 24,000 artillery shells per day, according to a November report by the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think tank, as well as dozens of scarce long-range missiles, attack drones and air-defense munitions. The high fire rates for artillery represent “a much larger consumption than NATO militaries would be able to sustain,” said Nick Reynolds, who co-authored the report.
“Ukraine needs constant artillery support with guns and shells,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told allies in a video-linked appeal for more supplies at a Group of Seven leaders meeting on Monday. “We need more rocket artillery and more long-range missiles.”
The war has had two distinct theaters since at least mid-October, when Russia began a systematic campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a mix of longer range missiles and attack drones. On Tuesday, U.S. officials said America is poised to send Patriot air and missile defense batteries to Ukraine, pending final approval from President Joe Biden.
An announcement on that could come soon — though with its Soviet-era stocks of munitions depleted, Ukraine will need more than Patriots.
The U.S. Army has said it will increase production of 155mm artillery shells to 20,000 per month, from 14,000, by the spring, and to 40,000 per month by 2025. The estimated Ukrainian usage is already around 100,000 shells per month. For Russia, RUSI estimates its forces have been firing an average of 20,000 artillery shells per day, to Ukraine’s 4,000.
Tank shells are another concern for Ukraine, as production lines for Soviet-model vehicles are scarce. Zelenskyy made an urgent plea for “modern” tanks in his address, a demand driven in part by the fact that NATO standard tanks would come with a ready pipeline of ammunition.
Meanwhile in Moscow, there are worries its military is spending too many hard-to-replenish resources to little effect, and with no clear strategy to win the war. That’s even as its forces make incremental gains around the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, and its arms factories work around the clock.
President Vladimir Putin this month canceled his annual marathon press conference, in what several officials working in or close to the Kremlin described as evidence he recognizes the lack of gains to report.
If Ukraine’s allies continue or increase their arms deliveries to Zelenskyy’s administration, it will be very difficult for Russian forces to avoid further withdrawals, according to a retired senior officer and defense analyst, who asked not to be identified. Criticism of the Russian war effort is punishable by jail.
Outside estimates of the state of Russia’s artillery stocks vary widely. In a lecture at RUSI late Wednesday, the UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said Russia faced a “critical shortage of artillery munitions,” having planned for only a 30 day war. “This means that their ability to conduct successful offensive ground operations is rapidly diminishing.”Yet just days earlier, the head of Estonia’s defense intelligence center estimated Russia still had about 10 million artillery shells in stock and was producing more at a rate of about 3.4 million per year. That, he warned, would allow Russia to continue the war for at least another year.
