Ukraine’s priorities in the war will become clear upon entry into the country. On the main access road from Poland, the road connecting Przemysl with Lviv, a propaganda poster in English greets the visitor with the following message: “Give arms to Ukraine”. The poster is illustrated with two fighter jets in formation. The supply of arms by its western allies was key for Ukraine to withstand the Russian invasion. Now he needs more powerful arsenals to regain lost ground.
At the start of the invasion four months ago, there was another sign in the same spot on the autobahn: “Close airspace.” The Ukrainian authorities called for NATO intervention to prevent Russian planes from flying, which the Atlantic Alliance categorically ruled out because of the risk of triggering a third world war. The conflict develops and the attacked contender adapts what his western partners can give him. Because it is not just about deploying an anti-aircraft battery or an aircraft, it is necessary to train the military that operates them and, above all, to accompany the deployment with a maintenance chain that is difficult to guarantee.
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With Russia’s attrition offensive now centered on the Donbass zone in the east and based on a massive deployment of their arsenal, any help seems scant. Oleksii Melnik, co-director of the Razumkov Center for International Relations and Security Studies, reminds EL PAÍS that the difference in artillery is miserable: there is one for every ten Russian rockets and howitzers in Ukraine. The Economist published last week that in two weeks of war Russia will fire the arsenal that the United States manufactures in a year.
The new icons of Ukrainian Orthodoxy are modern weapons like the US-made Javelin anti-tank missile. A constant presence on propaganda and wartime posters, the Javelin is the symbol of the massive destruction of Russian armor by Ukrainian forces — more than 1,600 tanks and 3,800 vehicles, according to the Defense Ministry. British NLAW anti-tank missile launchers, notorious for their small size, are also used by the defending army after Boris Johnson’s government donated 5,000 units.
Graffiti of a soldier firing a Javelin anti-tank missile on a street in Kyiv Cristian Segura
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Another weapon that is already part of Ukrainian popular culture is the Turkish Bayraktar drone. An example of this is that the phone company Lifecell has filled the country with an advertisement for an internet connection offering that bears the drone’s name and picture. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to maintain ties with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, but at the same time has allowed Ukraine to take over fifty Bayraktar units since the invasion began. This unmanned aircraft is the largest Ukrainian air fire service, responsible for the deadliest attacks on Russian columns of the war. A song dedicated to the drone, composed by Colonel Taras Borovok in early March, has even become famous. The opening stanzas of the song read thus: “The invaders arrived in Ukraine / With their new uniforms and chains of command, / But their inventory melted under the Bayraktar.”
As Russia consolidates its positions on conquered territory, long-range heavy artillery becomes vital to Ukraine. The weapon on everyone’s lips right now is the Himars, an American high-precision, self-transported, multi-launch missile system capable of ranges of 80 kilometers – double Ukraine’s current capacity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed in his daily message last Wednesday that the Himars had succeeded in destroying strategic Russian powder magazines. Four were added to Ukraine’s arsenal last June, according to a report released by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in July this year. The United States government has promised to deploy half a dozen more Himars units in the coming weeks. According to Zelensky’s team, these are grossly inadequate numbers. Mijailo Podoliak, one of the President’s most influential advisors, assured on June 13 that to win the war they would need 300 multi-launchers like the Himars, among other weapons.
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The Pentagon insists that one obstacle with the Himars and other high-tech machines is that they require weeks of training for the trains they operate and, most importantly, a difficult-to-secure supply line for ammunition and components. Thomas Theiner, an Italian military expert on the conflict in Ukraine and a recognized voice in Kyiv, pointed out on his social media this week that this Ukrainian inferiority is largely offset by the better information his army has on the location of targets thanks to the network of informants he has in the occupied territories. In an article published last May by the University of Potsdam (Germany), Sönke Neitzel, director of the International Military Studies program, added that the information provided by the United States’ intelligence agencies is as important or even more important than their arsenals States on the localization of Russian targets.
“For Ukraine, everything that is long-range weapons is of fundamental importance,” General Oleksii Hromov, deputy chief of operations of the high command of the Ukrainian armed forces, commented at a news conference this Thursday. Analyst Melnik believes that the supply of tanks is not as urgent as long-range artillery because they are more vulnerable to Russian superiority and because the Ukrainian authorities want the greatest possible precision of fire in the new phase of the counteroffensive in order to avoid as much as possible destruction in urban areas. Despite this, Presidential Advisor Podoliak also included 500 tanks in the ideal list to drive Russian troops out of the country.
A Bayraktar drone donated by Lithuania was flown to Ukraine this week.LITHUANIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE (via R)
Getting out of range of Russian fire requires an attack, the farther the better. For this reason, the new references of the war are the state-of-the-art self-propelled artillery pieces: the German PHZ 2000, the Polish AHS Krab and the French Caesar. The latter were crucial in the Ukrainian recapture of Snake Island, an island in the Black Sea that was strategic as a military checkpoint. The United States’ Himars and Harpoon anti-ship missiles were also fundamental in taking the island, according to ECFR.
Ukraine has homemade weapons that have proven their effectiveness, notably the Bohdana self-propelled howitzers and the Neptun anti-ship missile, one of the most advanced in the world, which sank the Russian fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, last April. . The Ukrainian Armed Forces have over a hundred S-300 anti-aircraft batteries imported from the Soviet Union. With this, General Hromov explained, it was possible to repel 70% of Russian air attacks.
Air defense for cities
Anti-aircraft systems are the obsession of the Ukrainian government. Zelenskyy points out almost every day that in order to restore a certain normality in the country’s cities, mechanisms that intercept Russian cruise missiles are needed. “No matter how battlefield warfare evolves, the priority is to secure our skies so women and children can get home.” The best news he received was the White House’s recent announcement that it would supply Ukraine with one of Norway’s most advanced air defense systems in the world, NASAMS.
Hromov is listed as the final phase of supplying Ukraine with fighter jets. Negotiations with the United States are slow, although the legal basis for training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-15 and F-16 aircraft has already been laid. NATO members such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany were initially reluctant to donate these planes due to the complexity of the operation, insufficient training in Ukraine and possible violent responses from Russia to some fighters beyond Ukraine. that would facilitate attacks on their own territory.
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