Ukraine's Demands for More Weapons Clash With U.S. Concerns
Along with WaPo, NYT is the de facto State mouthpiece-
WASHINGTON — The Ukrainians say they need faster shipments of long-range artillery and other sophisticated weapons to blunt Russia’s steady advance. The United States and the Europeans insist more are on the way but are wary of sending too much equipment before Ukrainian soldiers can be trained. The Pentagon is concerned about potentially depleting its stockpiles in the coming months.
The Biden administration and its allies are struggling to balance their priorities against Kyiv’s demands as Russian forces intensify their bombardment of cities and villages across eastern Ukraine, according to American and other Western diplomats, military officials and lawmakers.
U.S. officials say Ukraine could mount a counterattack and claw back some — though not all — of the territory it has lost if it can continue to exact a bloody toll on Russia until new weapons can flow in from the West. But some officials are concerned that pulling too many Ukrainian artillery specialists off the front lines for weeks of training on the new weapons could weaken Ukrainian defenses, accelerate Russian gains and make any future counterattacks more difficult to carry out.
“There are no good choices in a situation like this,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., head of the Armed Services Committee. “You have to take your best artillery officers and enlisted personnel and send them back for a week or two of training. But in the long run, I think that’s probably the smarter move.”
In addition, Pentagon officials have expressed concerns about hurting U.S. combat readiness if the war continues for months or longer. After two decades of mostly supporting counterterrorism missions, America’s defense industry largely stopped making the kinds of weapons Ukraine will need to survive a long war of attrition. The United States has authorized $54 billion in military, economic and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and has sent more than $7 billion in weapons drawn from existing Pentagon stockpiles.
FULL- Ukraine's Demands for More Weapons Clash With U.S. Concerns
Himars rocket strike kills Russian major general and up to a dozen officers
Boom, the magic weapons at work, Sab. Over in Kherson area...
A major general and up to a dozen Russian senior officers have been killed in the latest wave of strikes by Western precision weapons that have crippled Russian logistics.
Major General Artyom Nasbulin, the chief of staff of the 22nd Army Corps, was killed in a Himars rocket strike on a command post near Kherson, said Sergei Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa region.
If confirmed, he would be the 12th Russian general killed in Ukraine since the war began.
Another strike on an arms depot in Nova Khakova on Monday night sent a huge mushroom cloud towering into the air, and exposed Moscow's reliance on railways to deliver weapons.
Videos showed ignited munitions flying out of the explosion that shattered windows in nearby houses.
Monday’s blast was the largest of a series of devastating explosions to hit Russian munitions supplies over the past two weeks.
Ukraine has been hammering Russian logistics and command posts daily since long-range, high-precision Western weapons including the US Himars systems arrived at the end of June.
The blasts have become such a regular occurrence that pro-Ukrainian commentators on Twitter have taken to referring to the attacks as “Himars o’clock.”
Now, analysts say the campaign is close to crippling the huge logistics chain supplying the Russian invasion force and could change the course of the war.
Russia’s logistics are especially vulnerable because they are disproportionately reliant on railways and manual labour.
Instead of being moved on pallets by forklift trucks, shells destined for the front are often loaded by hand on to wagons in Russia, unloaded by hand at railheads in Ukraine, and stored in large ammo dumps.
When a unit needs supplies it sends a truck - usually a Ural 4320 six-wheeled lorry - to collect it, which is also loaded by hand.
That proved a weakness when Russian forces tried to storm ahead of the railheads when they attacked Kyiv early in the war. Unable to resupply their guns quickly enough, and with truck convoys being ambushed, they were forced to retreat.
But during the two-month battle for Luhansk oblast between April and June, the Russian railways successfully delivered enough ammunition for the attackers to fire 20,000 shells a day, forcing the Ukrainians into retreat.
That worked until Ukraine received the ultra-accurate, long-range rockets with which it is now wreaking havoc in the Russian rear.
Many of the supply dumps are in easily identifiable near the railway lines, and have long been known to Ukrainian intelligence. With Russian missile defence systems proving incapable of intercepting Himars rockets, they are defenceless.
Some have argued that Russia will develop its own countermeasures, including by dispersing targets like command posts and ammunition dumps, better use of camouflage, and setting up dummy targets to cause the Ukrainians to waste rockets.
“I’m sure measures will be taken, for example deployment of observation aircraft. I hope they will detect something. A single war-winning ‘wunderwaffe’ does not exist,” wrote Roman Sladkov, a Russian war correspondent, referring to the Nazi V-weapons of the Second World War.
Others are more pessimistic.
“Dispersing headquarters under a vertically centralised command structure with archaic communications is simply impossible. Dispersing depots is possible, but it requires maximal simplification and automation of loading and unloading and delivery of ammunition…but the whole process is still based on manual labour and ordinary wooden boxes,” wrote Voenny Osvedomitel, a Russian war blog on Telegram.
Introducing such reforms “under the circumstances will take years or in the best case months, so it is already too late,” it added. “We can debate at length, but in the current situation we do not see any universal and rapid solution to the problem.”
One drastic solution advocated by another Russian blogger would be to destroy all the road and rail bridges across the Dnieper river in central Ukraine with cruise missiles.
It is still unclear whether the Himars and Nato-standard 155mm artillery strikes will swing the war decisively in Ukraine’s favour.
Many frontline Ukrainian units overwhelmingly still rely on Soviet legacy 152mm artillery for fire support. They remain heavily outgunned and in some places have reported rationing as tight as 10 rounds a day.
The Russian army has long been aware of the vulnerability of rail-based supply lines. It has a dedicated corps of railway troops responsible for protecting and repairing trains and tracks.
Supplies are often moved in armoured trains carrying anti-aircraft cannons and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles - useless against Himars, but potentially effective against drones.
Railways hit by Ukrainian forces have been repaired quickly, and they have even laid tracks across pontoon bridges.
They will be studying how, if possible, to answer the current challenge.
Nasa's Firms fire monitoring dashboard showed a significant reduction in fires in southern and eastern Ukraine between June 8 and June 12, in a possible indication of a reduction in artillery fire.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-ne...general-dozen/
Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy sacks head of state security and prosecutor general
President says that staff of both officials in the occupied territories have been ‘working against our state’
Zelenskiy says staff of sacked officials have been 'working against' Ukraine
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy followed up on decrees in which he removed the State Security Service head and his Prosecutor General.
Reuters reports:
Zelenskiy said that more than 60 of their employees were working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territory.
He added that 651 criminal proceedings had been registered relating to high treason and collaboration by employees of prosecutor’s offices, pretrial investigation bodies and other law enforcement agencies.
Four more HIMARS Systems going to Ukraine, Pentagon chief says
The U.S. will be sending Ukraine four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) in another security assistance package to be announced later this week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.
In opening remarks at a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Austin said the incoming package will be the 16th drawdown of weapons from the Pentagon’s inventory since August 2021.
The pending announcement comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears its sixth month and Ukraine is looking to defend itself in its eastern Donbas region.
Austin said this was a “critical phase of the conflict,” meaning “our collective support for Ukraine is vital and urgent.”
“Russia thinks that it can outlast Ukraine and outlast us. But that’s just the latest in Russia’s string of miscalculations,” he added.
The U.S. first sent HIMARS around early June to allow the Ukrainians to more precisely strike targets from greater distances inside Ukraine. Both U.S. and Ukrainian officials have touted their effectiveness on the battlefield.
Speaking to reporters later on Wednesday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said that more than 200 Ukrainians have been trained on the systems.
The systems in the upcoming package would bring the number of launchers the U.S. has sent to 16. The U.S. has sent 12 thus far, most recently sending four in a $400 million assistance package announced on July 8.
In addition to the HIMARS, the upcoming package will include more rounds of multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) and artillery ammunition.
In his remarks, Austin touted other countries that have stepped up their support for Ukraine, such as the United Kingdom sending its own MLRS systems and Poland agreeing to transfer three battalions of 155mm self-propelled howitzers.
The Pentagon chief also thanked Norway for working with the U.S. to transfer two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, also known as Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems.
The systems were included in an $820 billion weapons package to Ukraine announced on July 1.
Four more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems going to Ukraine, Pentagon chief says | The Hill