Page 75 - bneMagazine March 2023 oil discount

bne March 2023
Opinion 75
especaily 155mm arrtillery shells, and a potential ammunition crissi is looming.
More help needs to be delievered right now. Ukraine has a window of opportunity in these next two months to strike
a hammer blow against Russia’s forces, which are currently
of poor quality, undersupplied and undermanned at the front, as it has taken a six month defensive stand as it trains its new recruits and waits for its factories to manufacture more arms.
“Ukraine has a window of opportunity in these next two months to strike
a hammer blow against Russia’s forces, which are currently of
poor quality, undersupplied and undermanned at the front”
Tanks and planes could break lines and possibly repeat the rout in Kharkiv last September. If Ukraine waits until summer to launch a counteroffensive it will almost certainly face
a much bigger, better trained and supplied Russian army. Tanks, planes and modern offensive missiles could make all the difference.
Ukraine is already being forced to ration its shells. While more shells are available from the likes of US allies in South Korea and Israel, probably enough to get to the end of this year, the lack of ammunition is already starting to tell on Ukraine’s ability to resist a Russian onslaught.
Igor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy’s office, told Bloomberg the country’s stocks
are “almost zero” in an interview on February 10. Intense fighting in Ukraine means that its military is running out
of ammunition, with stocks not being replenished in time, Zhovkva said.
Zhovkva lamented that “now we are having like almost zero ammunition,” a situation that makes it harder for the Ukrainian military to respond to Russian shelling. “We are running [out] of the ammunition very quickly because the fights are intensive,” he said, adding that Russia has more firepower.
He also said the West needs to send more arms, including long-range missiles to “de-occupy Ukrainian territory,” as opposed to hitting targets inside Russia.
According to Zhovkva, this type of weaponry would be
crucial to launch a counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces. Commenting on the military aid already provided by the
West, Zhovkva said that it was “too late, too little, and too slow.”
Jet lack
Zelenskiy made little progress on this European tour to
get more planes. Indeed, despite the promise of MBTs, the West remains extremely reluctant to send Ukraine offensive weapons. The refusal to follow up with jets means that the war goals of the west remain: avoid a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia at all costs and ensure Ukraine doesn’t lose to Russia in second place. Ensuring Ukraine wins the war is not
a Western war goal, but it would be nice if it happened.
The Kremlin's military planning and the performance of the Russian army have been a disaster, but the sheer number of men it can field and its overwhelming advantage in artillery mean that if it surges its forces this summer, Putin could conquer the Donbas, declare victory and freeze the conflict. / bne IntelliNews
After a year of fighting both sides are becoming exhausted, but Russia has already brought an extra 300,000 conscripts to the fight with a partial mobilisation that started on September 21 and could add an additional half a million men, or more, in the widely anticipated mass mobilisation that all signs suggest will start sometime in March.
Manpower is going to make a big difference. Without the powerful modern western offensive weapons, the war in Ukraine increasingly looks like something out of WWII; troops cower in trenches as artillery pounds both sides’ positions causing a steady stream of deaths. There is little footage of high tech “bunker busters” that filled screens during the Iraq war. In this set up another half a million men, even of low fighting quality, could prove decisive.
To add to the problems, while Russia has already long since started to put its economy on a war footing, as bne IntelliNews reported, Ukraine is running out of ammunition, as the West has yet to invest into expanding its munitions production. The US has donated around one million of the crucial 155mm artillery shells, but it can only produce 100,000 a year, according to a recent study. Ukraine is currently firing off in
a day what the US can produce in a month.
An ammunition shortage is looming and reports from the frontline by bne IntelliNews’ reporters and others is that
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