(Paris) While Kyiv has launched a counter-offensive that promises crescendo material losses, its NATO allies are under pressure to replace Western weapons destroyed on the battlefield over time and provide mass ammunition, without damage their own defense tool.
Brandishing in recent days as a trophy photos of damaged or abandoned American and German tanks, Russia claims to have destroyed 25% to 30% of Western armaments received by Ukraine. A figure undoubtedly greatly inflated, but impossible to verify independently.
The only certainty: faced with walls of mines, prowling ammunition in quantity and ferocious Russian artillery, the Ukrainian forces are logically suffering losses while trying to break through the enemy lines of defense. And this is only the beginning, Kyiv being far from having thrown all its forces into battle.
According to the specialized site Oryx, which lists these losses from photos or videos taken on the battlefield, Kyiv lost 4 German Leopard tanks recently delivered, 2 French AMX-10 RC FR reconnaissance tanks and more than 70 combat tanks. western infantry.
“The battle will no doubt get tougher. For Ukraine’s international partners, the summer is likely to be very uncomfortable. The losses will increase and the successes will take time to materialize,” warns Jack Watling, of the British think tank Royal United services institute (RUSI).
“It is vital that training programs for Ukrainian units continue to enable them to generate force, and that the defense industry mobilizes to provide military equipment to Ukraine over the long term”, totally dependent on its allies on this plan, adds the expert in land combat.
Despite European efforts to speed up production rates, some countries have already warned of their limits. “We are not going to be able to replace every tank that stops working,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Monday.
The question of supplies for the Ukrainian forces was at the center of the meeting held this Thursday in Brussels of the Contact Group for Ukraine, in the presence of industrialists of defense, before the meeting of Ministers of Defense of the Alliance.
“Double bites”
“We are studying how to make our aid to Ukraine sustainable, while preserving our own defense tool”, summarizes a European government source.
The United States got the ball rolling by pledging $325 million in additional military aid on Tuesday, including Ukrainian armor and air defense systems.
Further announcements could come at the next NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12.
“There is an urgent need to support them” during their offensive, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted on Thursday during an interview with the French program “C dans l’air” broadcast on France 5. “And very likely, we will commit at the (Vilnius) summit to a multi-year support program for Ukraine,” he added.
On the ammunition side, the European Commission presented in early May a plan of 500 million euros to accelerate the pace and reach a volume of one million shells per year produced in the EU.
“We are doubling down on the production of ammunition for tanks,” Harald Weismüller, director of the Rheinmetall factory in Unterlüss, in Lower Saxony (Germany), recently assured AFP.
The armament group, Europe’s leading manufacturer of ammunition for tanks and artillery pieces, is running the country’s largest industrial defense complex at full speed to cover the needs for armored vehicles and ammunition for the Ukrainian front and to replenish the stocks of NATO member states.
Flagship product of the Unterlüss site: the 120 mm shells intended for the Leopard 2 armored vehicle, this German battle tank that Berlin agreed to deliver to Kyiv this year after months of hesitation.
From 60,000 pieces produced per year before the Russian war against Ukraine, the rate has risen to 240,000.
Another key issue is the maintenance of repairable Western equipment, which must be able to be quickly repaired and returned to the battlefield.
According to the Ukrainian press, Berlin and Warsaw are about to conclude an agreement on the creation of a maintenance center in Poland to repair damaged Leopard tanks in the Ukrainian theater.
Similar centers already exist in Slovakia and Romania.