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In a recent public release, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, stated that, between 6 and 14 August, Russian artillery has delivered fire volumes of about 400,000 artillery shells, or about 44,500 per day.
The Ukrainian forces had to limit the response to 131,000 shells, or about 14,600 per day in the same period, due to insufficient ammunition availability. A figure three times lower, therefore, which confirms a long-established trend. Between October and December 2003, for example, Russian artillery consumed around 30,000 projectiles per day, with the Ukrainian counterpart was limited to around 10,000.
Similar comparative ratios in terms of fire volumes occurred for almost all phases of the conflict, with the most favourable rate, from the Ukrainian point of view, occurring only between August and September 2023, when the Russians used around 20,000 shells per day and the Ukrainians around 13,000.
The Ukrainian artillery has not yet recovered from the months of temporary cessation of US aid that occurred between the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024. As is well known, this event had, the merit of triggering greater activism among European countries in the search for solutions to the age-old problem of insufficient artillery munitions aid to Ukraine.
In this sense, the famous Czech initiative (financed by a number of European countries and Canada) aimed at resupplying ex-Warsaw Pact standard projectiles wherever possible throughout the world, given their suitability for the calibres that still make up the majority of the Ukrainian artillery stock, was significant. Nevertheless, two main factors limited the efficacy of such measures:
1) Not all countries still operating Soviet-type material were in fact willing to resell it. Worse still, a part of available stocks was no longer in suitable condition for use. This implied a difference between the declared amounts and the effectively deliverable ones.
2) Several countries participating in the initiative promised to cover costs, but never clarified their schedule nor paid their share (concretely: no transfer of money occurred).
The Czech initiative is expected to deliver 500,000 shells by the end of 2024, with 100,000 delivered between July and August. The sum of this initiative, other European contributions and the US aid would result into the delivery of 120,000 rounds per month till the end of 2024. This represents less than 25% of Ukrainians needs.