Fighting continues to rage over large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, and much of the fighting takes the form of long-range artillery clashes between Russian and Ukrainian armies.
Until now, Ukraine largely used howitzers inherited from Soviet times. But in recent weeks, state-of-the-art artillery systems supplied to Ukraine by foreign countries, including US M777s, have arrived on the front line.
Washington and Europe have devoted billions of euros in armaments to help Ukraine repel the invasion of the Russian army, which is better equipped than its own.
“On behalf of the men who now use the M777, I would say it’s like going from a steam train to an electric car,” Captain Dmytro Pletentchuk of the Mykolaiv military administration told AFP on Monday evening. (south).
“Our enemies are very affected,” he said, adding that exchanges of artillery fire were taking place in the region “every day and every night”.
According to him, the front line near this port city has largely stabilized following the attempt by Russian forces to take Mykolaiv in the first weeks of this war which began on February 24. The city remains a strategic shield protecting Odessa, the largest Ukrainian port.
