(Paris) Between Ukrainians who are in desperate need of Western military aid and Russians under sanctions who are firing on all cylinders, which side will find itself first on its knees for lack of shells, bombs, missiles?
Posted at 6:30 a.m.
“We have information that Russia has approached North Korea asking for ammunition,” the Pentagon said recently. It would be shells and rockets for millions of dollars.
In addition, “it is likely that Russia will struggle to maintain its stocks of drones”, because it is “affected by shortages of components caused by the sanctions”, underlines the British Ministry of Defense, noting that the Russians seem to be flying a lot less drones for a few days.
Moscow’s desire to acquire drones from Iran would be further proof of this.
The Western and Ukrainian governments insist that Russia suffers from major logistical deficiencies, that the strikes, in particular thanks to Western armaments, are hurting it very much, and that it is using obsolete armaments, because its stock is running out.
Russian mystery
“What remains to the Russians is mysterious. They had sufficient stock for their initial plan, but the fact is that the war is lasting longer than expected and the destruction of stocks by the American surface-to-ground Himars rockets is reshuffling the cards,” explains Frenchman Pierre Grasser, associate researcher at the Sirice laboratory. .
“Moscow doesn’t have many allies to supply itself and relieve its factories. China still refuses to get involved beyond the diplomatic plan,” he said. The North Korean option “is quite realistic, since the Russian guns use the same shells. What Pyongyang could give should remain limited, just enough to replenish stocks for a few weeks.
If the sanctions weigh on Russian industry, “the shell factories are not really affected: it is not high technology, it is enough to have access to raw materials, and Moscow has it. What it needs is time to produce these shells and of course money”, he analyzes.
“The chances of Russian military exhaustion are much higher than those of Ukrainian military exhaustion,” said French expert Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) last week at the security forum. of the Black Sea and the Balkans organized in Bucharest by the Romanian center New Strategy Center.
To counter the Russians, the Ukrainians are constantly demanding weapons and ammunition from the West, but this support could quickly reach its limits.
The United States announced Thursday new military aid to Kyiv for an amount of 675 million dollars, before the opening in Ramstein (Germany) of a new meeting of allies of Ukraine intended to coordinate their support.
Pakistani, Iranian shells
However, the Institute for the World Economy (IFW) noted in mid-August that new aid pledges to Ukraine had fallen to “almost zero”, and that “no large country like Germany, France or Italy have made new promises”.
“The Ukrainians have consumed almost all of their ex-Soviet caliber ammunition. To avoid the shortage, the West, among other things, offered Kyiv some 239 guns in a NATO caliber of 155 mm, including the French Caesar guns. Added to this is the donation of more than 492,000 shells since April. They have been consumed since July at the rate of 3000 projectiles per day. Technically, Ukraine has enough to last until the beginning of winter. However, there are some questions about NATO’s ability to provide beyond that,” explains Pierre Grasser.
On social networks, accounts specializing in the identification of weapons note that Ukraine fires Pakistani or Iranian shells, for example, suggesting that multiple channels have been set up.
Expense factor
Given the balance of power and the considerable losses suffered on both sides, military aid to Ukraine is very largely insufficient to hope to win the war, warned at the Bucharest forum Andrei Illarionov, former economic adviser to Vladimir Putin now working for the American center CSP.
During the Second World War, the balance of power on the front had changed in 1943 when the expenses of the allies had started to exceed those of the Axis, noted the expert.
“Military aid to Ukraine does not exceed three billion dollars per month, the combined spending of the coalition of allies and Ukraine appears to be around $7 billion per month, at the highest […] For Russia, it is estimated between 15 and 27 billion dollars per month”, but “in a long war of attrition, the crucial factor is that of military expenditure”, he estimated.
For Pierre Grasser, “in terms of military value, the two camps play on equal terms. The Ukrainians have fewer weapons than the Russians, but they are now much more accurate. Moscow still has access to vital raw materials for the war effort. We are entering a period of unstable equilibrium: the one who risks losing the battle of attrition is the one who could launch the counter-offensive too many”.