Sao Paulo
NATO warned on Tuesday (3) that ammunition supplies the Western alliance uses to sustain Ukraine’s war effort against Russia are running out. “The bottom of the barrel is already visible,” said Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the group’s top military official.
In a speech at the Warsaw Security Forum, he said that the governments of NATO member countries need to “increase production much faster” and that the current pace reflects the years of relative peace after the Cold War.
Today, analysts estimate that almost all of Kiev’s artillery fire against the Russian invaders is of Western origin, as Ukraine’s stockpiles of Soviet materiel have been almost fully utilized since the invasion began in February 2022.
The United States says it has sent two million 155mm howitzers, the standard used by NATO, to the government of Volodymir Zelensky. The United Kingdom, another key NATO member, said it had donated 300,000 so far.
For national security reasons, no one is disclosing the exact arsenal available, but Bauer’s speech meets calls for more arms production, particularly in European countries with such capabilities in the alliance which brings together 29 nations on the continent in addition to Canada and the United States.
The alliance’s military spending target is 2%, but by 2022 only six of its members exceeded that level. The data is expected to change this year as military investments are increasingly announced due to perceptions of the risks posed by the war which led to Finland, which has already joined NATO, and Sweden, which is still in it is to abandon their historical positions of neutrality.
“If we don’t spend 2% on defense now, in a war in Europe, when will we?” British Defense Secretary James Heappey asked at the forum. Western military stocks “look a little tenuous,” he said.
Ukraine claims to have received the equivalent of R$500 billion in direct military aid by the end of July. According to the Institute for the World Economy in Kiel (Germany), the United States is at the forefront of this aid with R$370 billion.
In addition to ammunition, there is high demand for precision strike missiles, such as the already donated Storm Shadow (UK) and ScalpEG (France), which were used in Kiev’s successful attacks on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.
These are very expensive weapons, almost R$ 13 million per unit, and therefore very economical to use. Germany is hesitant to deliver its Taurus longhaul model, which Kiev has persistently demanded. The reason is also political: Berlin fears an operation against targets in Russia and thus a military escalation of the confrontation.
On the Russian side, Moscow appears to have overcome the chip shortage for its precision missiles such as the Kalibr by gaining access to components through countries that have not complied with Western sanctions due to the war.
As for ammunition production, analysts say Russian capacity has doubled to 2 million 152mm howitzers per year. Observers assume that Moscow fired around ten million of them at positions in Ukraine last year alone, advancing on huge Sovietera deposits. Kiev used perhaps four times less artillery.
Speculation about North Korea’s supply of this type of weapons arose when Vladimir Putin hosted dictator Kim Jongun at a space base in the Russian Far East in exchange for more advanced technologies.
For Ukraine, the West’s admission is more bad news given the counteroffensive it has been pushing since June. Its current phase has ended with the onset of the northern hemisphere autumn rains and later winter and has not resulted in any significant changes in the balance of war.
The West’s weariness with spending on the conflict is also evident in the victory of a proRussian party in this weekend’s Slovak elections, which, if it manages to form a government, will have to end its support for Kiev, and in the hardening of the Polish position towards Zelensky. Also a political issue: the country goes to the polls on the 15th and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wants to keep the presidency.
Both countries are in NATO. In addition, Joe Biden’s administration had to reach an emergency agreement with Congress to pass a spending bill that would not provide new funding for Ukraine for at least 45 days. This prevented an interruption of government services during this period.
This Tuesday, the American President held a telephone conference with the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Romania, Poland, Japan, Italy, Canada, NATO, the European Commission and the European Council to emphasize the need , continue efforts to support Zelenski.
It was a sign of support for Ukraine, just like the sign from the European Union the day before when its foreign ministers met in Kiev with the Ukrainian president and representatives of his government. In the American case, there are fears that the start of the election campaign will make it even more difficult for the White House to approve additional aid.
The Republican opposition is already complaining, particularly in the chamber it dominates, about support without a decisive military victory. Biden’s likely opponent, former President Donald Trump, is expected to bring the issue to the forefront of the debate during the campaign he has already signaled he is against continuing aid to Kyiv.