Kiev

- “Close the sky,” a cry made by the Ukrainians to the UN organizations and NATO at the beginning of the war on their country, to limit the superiority of Russian aviation and the impact of its missile strikes, but it was rejected for fear of direct confrontation with Moscow, so Kiev leaders turned to demanding heavy weapons, especially artillery Which is considered one of the main weaknesses of the Ukrainian army.

Indeed, after the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions in the north at the end of last March, artillery in the eastern Donbass region became "the main advantage of Russia's advantage," according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba earlier.

Artillery allows Russia to practically excel through continuous bombardment without stopping, and Vadim Skipetsky, deputy head of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence, acknowledges this fact, saying, "We have one artillery unit for every 10-15 units of the Russians, we lose because of artillery, and everything depends on what the West offers. Our".

The American artillery corps known as "HIMARS", which the Pentagon announced to supply Ukraine with a number of recently (French)

Russian artillery weapons

The Russian combat forces in Ukraine have 122 mm self-propelled guns known as "Gvozdika", "Akatsya" self-propelled guns (152 mm), "Mesta-S" and "Msta-C" installed 152 mm caliber, in addition to self-propelled guns. SAW2C19, Hysynth2S5 152mm tank-mounted guns, and S7 Peony2 203mm guns.

But the Russian artillery bombardment relies a lot on launchers that launch with greater force and intensity, most notably:

  • "Grad" (122 mm) with a range of up to 42 km, with the ability to direct 40 shells in each barrage.

  • "Smerch" (300 mm) has an effective range of up to 90 km, with the ability to direct 12 shells in each barrage.

  • "Tornado", a modified version of "Smerch" in 2012 and four times more powerful than "Grad", is also considered high-precision, as it is controlled by a computer, and is considered a competitor to the American "Millers" and "HIMARS" systems.

  • "Uragan" (220 mm), the weapon adopted in Russia since 1975, fires 16 shells within 20 seconds.

  • TOS-A1 flamethrowers, designed and used in the Chechen war, have a large capacity to launch rockets loaded with highly combustible fuel.

This is in addition to Russia's reliance on bombing with medium and long-range winged missiles, some of which reach 5.5 thousand km, such as "Kaliber", "Tochka", "Iskander", "Onyx", "Kinzal", and X22" (X22). ), and "X59" (X59).


scorched earth policy

Ukraine and the West have often talked about Russia's "scorched earth" policy of advancing in the Donbass region in southeastern Ukraine, relying above all on artillery fire.

In turn, military expert Mikhailo Zhirukhov says, "For Russia, it does not matter how many missiles are fired, nor where they will fall. The important thing is that they cause destruction, fires and extensive losses in buildings and among civilians and soldiers, even evacuation and withdrawal."

Jirokhov added to Al-Jazeera Net, "This is what they did in Hostomil, Bucha, and Erbin on the outskirts of Kyiv, when we were checking accuracy, lest our shells go in vain. We fire at Russian targets about 5-6 thousand artillery shells per day, and they fire at us multiples of these quantities without care."

He continued, "They withdrew from Kyiv because our artillery, despite its weakness, destroyed their long lingering columns, but the picture is different in Donbass, they are advancing from the lands they control and spread in, and yet they continue to follow the policy of burning and destroying intractable cities, as they did in Mariupol and Severodonetsk, this is a well-known Russian approach." .

Ukrainian artillery fires Grad-type missiles near the town of Lyschansk, Lugansk region (Reuters)

Optimism about the cannons of Western support

Although the balance of artillery power is strongly in favor of Russia, Ukrainian officials are expressing optimism about the arrival of the first batches of American "HIMARS" cannons to the battlefronts, and the possibility of obtaining soon the "Millers" guns as well.

The Ukrainian president expressed his satisfaction with the effectiveness of 4 HIMARS cannons that reached the battle fronts, before Kyiv announced yesterday, Thursday, the arrival of 5 others.

And the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov considered that "the arrival of HIMARS cannons made it possible to hit previously unattainable Russian targets," apparently referring to military bases and arms depots whose destruction is announced almost daily instead of Kill soldiers and destroy only vehicles and armor.

In a more optimistic expression, the head of Ukrainian Military Intelligence Kirillo Budanov asserts that "the arrival of these cannons and other Western weapons will enter the war in a phase of transformation and bone-breaking during the coming August, before the Ukrainian forces resume re-controlling their lands in the foreseeable future," he said.

For this purpose, Oleksiy Aristovich, an advisor to the Ukrainian president, believes that the matter is in its infancy, and that his country's army needs at least 60 HIMARS artillery systems, in addition to the need for advanced Western air defense systems.