Artem, a battery commander in the Ukrainian military’s 26th Artillery Brigade, spends an excessive amount of time pondering over the shots that he cannot afford to take. He makes critical decisions regarding when his gunners can engage and when they must hold back, with the latter becoming increasingly frequent occurrences.
The 24-year-old Artem, who goes by the call sign “Shaman,” feels a deep sense of unease as he sits at a makeshift desk in a narrow dugout situated only a few miles away from the front lines in eastern Ukraine. The screens before him provide a vivid display of the battlefield, and he frequently receives requests for support directly from infantry units on the ground.
“Last summer, we used 100 shells per day,” Artem told us, his voice filled with regret. “The enemy infantry didn’t even consider advancing here because they knew that every unit present would employ all its resources to repel their attack.”
These days, however, his men are forced to make do with a fraction of the ammunition they once had. This limitation allows Russian troops to slip through undetected and unchallenged.
Artem explained, “In the past, if I saw their firing position, a dugout, machine guns… I would hit them. Now I don’t do that. The priority is the tank, the gun – if it is firing, the multiple launch rocket systems. If I see infantry and no one gives me a command, then I don’t shoot, because we have to save the shells.”
This pattern is repeating itself along the front lines in Ukraine. With the United States Congress stalling on President Joe Biden’s request for an additional $60 billion in Website security assistance for Kyiv, Ukrainian commanders are forced to make difficult choices regarding the allocation of their dwindling stockpiles of ammunition.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told us that the loss of Avdiivka, a town that has been on the front lines since Russian-backed separatists seized control of parts of the eastern Donbas region in 2014, could have been avoided if Ukraine had received “all the artillery ammunition that we needed to defend it.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, concurred with this assessment. They stated that delays in Western help, specifically “artillery ammunition and critical air defense systems,” had inhibited Ukrainian troops from defending against Russian advances in Avdiivka.
Oleh Kalashnikov, the spokesperson for the 26th Artillery Brigade, pointed out the significant change in supplies in recent months. “An offensive does not work without artillery,” he said. “If we want to launch an assault somewhere, the artillery must strike first. Only after that comes the infantry; otherwise there might be losses.”
“When [the Russians] launch an assault and our infantry asks for artillery support, when it works well, the infantry immediately feels better and more secure because they know they are protected,” Kalashnikov explained. “It has a psychological effect too.”
However, he acknowledged that the Ukrainian army had been outmatched in terms of artillery rounds fired earlier in the war. Now it’s Russia that holds the clear edge on ammunition.
Dr. Sviatoslav Mykytiuk, a surgeon at a medical facility not far from the Bakhmut area front line, is seeing the consequences of the ammunition shortages firsthand. More soldiers are getting injured on the front lines because Russian infantry can get within firing distance of Ukrainian troops more frequently, and it is taking much longer to evacuate the wounded.
The standard goal in military medicine is to evacuate casualties within the “golden hour” after injury to maximize their chances of survival and recovery. In eastern Ukraine, Mykytiuk said, evacuation can take up to a day or even longer. This has resulted in many more secondary injuries caused by the long delays. Soldiers are arriving at the medical point suffering from hypothermia and extreme exhaustion.
“It’s clear that our soldiers do not have enough of these modern weapons,” Mykytiuk said. “But the morale is still there.”
He recalled a reconnaissance man who was hit in a drone attack while returning from a forward mission. With a deep wound across his shoulder and back, bleeding heavily, he walked six kilometers (four miles) to reach his unit before collapsing at the medical point.
Oleh Bulatetskyi, an artillery troop commander with the 30th Brigade, understands that he must make every shot count while fighting Russians around Bakhmut. The troops on the front lines, including those he and his men know personally, are counting on him for protection.
Bulatetskyi’s unit is using Soviet-era 2S1 Gvozdika howitzers, which were developed in Kharkiv, not far from where he currently is stationed. These artillery pieces are reliable and easy to move around but lack precision compared to more modern Western weapons.
Lack of accuracy, however, is not an insurmountable problem. One way to compensate for it is by firing as many rounds as possible to maximize impact. But that strategy is no longer an option in Ukraine.
Bulatetskyi, a 27-year-old whose call sign is “Sailor,” said that they have had major problems with ammunition shortages during the Bakhmut and Soledar operation. Now, they are finding new ways to cope. Drones, for instance, are helping them navigate these challenges.
Despite the Gvozdikas being older and lacking precision compared to more modern Western weapons, they are well-made machines that can still do the job when supplied sufficiently. Artem, a gunner in Bulatetskyi’s platoon, would love to fight Russians with modern NATO weapons as well but appreciates the Gvozdikas for their reliability.
Artem, a 27-year-old with a big beard, has spent weeks and months at a time in freezing dugouts, ready to launch an attack at any moment. He asked for his last name to remain private.
Sitting inside the heart of the massive weapon, Artem shared his feelings about the ammunition shortage. “One time, I was firing, and it turned out that at that moment, I was covering my nephew’s unit,” he said. “We fired very few shells there, and there were many wounded. We held the place, but there could have been fewer losses or maybe the injuries wouldn’t have been so severe if we had more.”
His nephew was injured in the battle and nearly lost an arm. “If he were thinner, he would have,” Artem said, referring to his nephew’s narrow escape from losing his arm. “But he is ok now, fighting again.”
Nowhere is the toll of the ammunition shortage more evident than at the Kharkiv City Cemetery, where an entire new section has been dedicated to recently fallen soldiers. Hundreds of graves, each flying a large Ukrainian flag, fill the area. The sound of the flags waving in the wind is overwhelming.
As Kalashnikov, spokesperson for the 26th Artillery Brigade, put it, “They say that we are stopping the Russian evil from spreading across the world at the expense of human lives, while Europe and America are only spending money. That’s a pretty good deal.”
