War rations: Front-line Ukrainian units deal with ammo shortages in the fight with Russia

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine — “It would be easier to tell you how many shells we fire in a month,” said 24-year-old “Fritz,” looking dejected. “At the moment, we fire about two or three a day on average.”

On the morning of Nov. 26, we meet with Fritz, a soldier of the Ukrainian army’s 56th Brigade, in a frozen field near Chasiv Yar, a small town in the Donetsk Oblast. Per reporting customs here, no last names are given for Ukrainian fighters at the front.

For the past four months, Fritz’s unit’s 120 mm Soviet-built mortar has been providing much-needed support to Ukrainian infantrymen as they fend off daily Russian assaults in the area.

The soldier had just been asked about the rate of shells his unit could fire at the nearby Russian forces in a week. This rate has steadily fallen with the need to preserve limited and shrinking arsenals as winter sets in.

After the fall in May of the neighboring city of Bakhmut, Chasiv Yar has come under increasing pressure from Russian forces set on conquering the entirety of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. The handful of the 12,000 inhabitants remaining survive in the basements of bombed-out residential buildings.

With a U.S. aid package hung up on Capitol Hill and signs of war fatigue setting in among other Western allies, the embattled Ukrainian army is increasingly struggling to match Russian firepower on the battlefield. Fritz’s unit is starved for ammunition. Their gun sits idle under a camouflage net, hidden from the ubiquitous surveillance of Russian reconnaissance drones. The crew spends most of its time underground, in a nearby dugout.

The rudimentary shelter is outfitted with a makeshift stove and offers a welcome respite from the dreary Eastern European winter and constant Russian shelling. The idleness, however, weighs heavily on the soldiers’ morale.

“We cook, we smoke cigarettes and we surf the internet thanks to our Starlink. There’s not much else to do,” one says.

The men also have to contend with an infestation of rodents. Seeking refuge from the biting cold, hundreds of mice have descended on their position and gnawed through the crew’s food and equipment. “And our bloody cigarettes, too,” a burly soldier mutters.

From a plastic bag stashed under one of the beds, Fritz pulls out the now-unusable cable of a Starlink relay. The mice have gnawed through the cord, exposing its wiring in places.

“We had to replace it; otherwise, we would have been cut off from the rest of our brigade,” he says.

Battle stations

A radio transmission interrupts the gripe session.

“Silver,” the unit’s commanding officer, has just received the coordinates of a new target. The men rush outside and hastily put on their protective gear as they climb the frozen embankment leading to a potholed road.

The mortar is set up in a ditch on the other side of the road. Gripping a small notebook in one hand and his radio in the other, Silver silently oversees the preparations. Two soldiers uncover the weapon. Another is tasked with preparing a shell before handing it to Fritz.

The young soldier lifts the shell above the tube and awaits the order.

Covering their ears, the soldiers ready themselves for the blast.

“Fire!” screams Fritz, letting go of the round.

To no avail — the shell is a dud.

The mortar must now be dismantled and the round manually removed from the tube, a dangerous and time-consuming process.

The crew eventually fires seven shells toward the target, roughly 3 miles away.

“A good day,” Fritz says as the men return to the dugout.

Upon reaching the relative safety of the tree line, one of them lights a cigarette, seemingly oblivious to the sound of explosions in the distance.

“The 120 mm shells are in very short supply. There’s not enough of them for every brigade,” Fritz says. “And because of the weather — or because they were not properly stored — some of the ones we do get are unusable.”

Production challenges

Easy to set up and able to provide accurate indirect fire, the 120 mm mortar is an effective light artillery weapon and a crucial part of the Ukrainian arsenal. In August, the weapons conglomerate Ukrainian Armored Technology announced a joint venture with two NATO countries to produce 120 mm shells. Yet few of them seem to have made their way to the front while emboldened Russian forces intensify their assaults in the eastern sector of the country.

The pervasive lack of ammunition is not limited to 120 mm shells, and the shortfalls are increasingly felt along the sprawling front line.

“At the height of the fighting near Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in summer 2022, we could fire up to 400 shells a day,” says Andrii, the 24-year-old captain of an artillery crew of the 57th Motorized Brigade. “Now, it’s between 20 and 40 a day on average.”

Another soldier chimes in, “I’d say it’s more often 10 than 20.”

For weeks, Andrii and the men under his command have operated 122 mm 2S1 “Gvodzika” self-propelled howitzers near Kupyansk, a town in the oblast of Kharkiv. Liberated in the heady days of the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive of September 2022, the region has seen increasingly fierce fighting as Russia ramps up its efforts to recapture this strategic axis.

The much-touted spring offensive to build on Ukraine’s stunning gains of late 2022 has failed to meet Kyiv’s expectations. Despite taking heavy losses, the dug-in Russian military has primarily held on to its occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine. It has even gone back on the attack in some places.

In its latest analysis of the fighting, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian offensive operations were continuing “along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast and advanced near Avdiivka.”

While Iranian-made drones and the delivery of North Korean weapons and ammunition bolster Russia’s war effort, Ukraine’s allies struggle to supply Kyiv’s besieged forces with the shells they desperately need.

The Pentagon this week announced a $175 million military aid package for Ukraine that included artillery shells, anti-armor missiles and small-arms ammunition, among other items, but warned that the shipment might be the last for a while. Biden administration officials insist they are “scraping the bottom of the barrel” for Ukraine military aid as Congress debates a proposed $64 billion supplemental aid package for Kyiv.

“Unless Congress acts … this will be one of the last security assistance packages we can provide to Ukraine,” the White House said in a Wednesday message to lawmakers.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said last month that the European Union would be unable to fulfill its pledge to supply Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells and missiles by March.

“It is safe to assume that the 1 million rounds will not be reached,” Mr. Pistorius said ahead of a summit of EU defense ministers in Brussels.

The temporizing is felt directly on the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

“We are tasked with helping the infantry manning the first line of defenses, but we have to prioritize our targets,” Andrii said. “We simply don’t have enough shells.”