Yesterday at 23:55
Russia has 5 times more shells than the Ukrainian Defense Forces. Military analyst, SBU employee (2004-2015) Ivan Stupak stated this on the FREEDOM TV channel.
“Quantity is king for now. Unfortunately, the Russian Federation, we admit, has more shells than Ukraine, at least 5 times, judging by the daily shots, there are also more people. Yes, one of the American publications cited the figure that 87% of Russian military personnel died in Ukraine from the number who began their journey at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. It is clear that there was a partial mobilization in 2022, a hybrid mobilization, and “prisoners” were taken from Nepal and Cameroon, wherever they were taken. Unfortunately, in any case, there are more manpower in the Russian Federation, more shells, more drones, more guided bombs, more aircraft, more of them in all positions. Our only argument is that there is a wall behind us, we simply have nowhere to retreat further,” he said.
In this regard, according to Stupak, the Ukrainian Defense Forces hold each settlement for as long as possible, causing maximum harm to the Russian Federation. Unmanned aircraft are helping to contain Russian advances.
“Delivery of a million drones to Ukraine was announced. We don’t know how many of them are underwater, surface, how many are ground, how many are airborne, in any case, we are moving into the era of drones in the absence of shells, because shells take a long time to produce. Last week, Rheinmetall announced the launch of the construction of a new workshop for the production of shells for Ukraine – 200 thousand shells per year, but this will only be from 2025. Therefore, unfortunately, there is no artillery – this is a big minus; we have no aviation – this is also a big minus, this also needs to be recognized,” said the military analyst.
He recalled that the range of drones is limited – figures were given up to 10 kilometers maximum, so they cannot fully compensate for the lack of shells.
“We need artillery, because Russian artillery is at a distance of 15-20 kilometers, maybe 30 kilometers, drones cannot reach them. That is, we need either drones with an increased range, or just artillery. It is very much needed to reach distant Russian positions. Plus, we really need long-range missiles, as happened last year in August – a massive arrival at the airfield in the area of occupied Lugansk, when up to 9 units of Russian aviation equipment and helicopters were destroyed or damaged. That is, such arrivals using American missiles are very important to us. But such missiles are not in our sights yet, certainly not in February,” Stupak said.
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