Brigadier General: Ukraine has switched to defense in some areas, there is a shortage of ammunition
Ukraine’s frontline troops are facing a shortage of artillery shells and have scaled back some military operations because of a lack of foreign aid, a senior military general told Reuters.
Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavsky spoke after Republican lawmakers withheld $60 billion in US aid package worth US dollars, and Hungary blocked 50 billion. Euros of European Union funding to Kyiv fighting the Russian invasion.
“There is a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (ammunition) – it’s 122 mm, 152 mm. And today, these problems exist across the front line,” he said in an interview.
O. Tarnavskis said that the lack of artillery shells is a “very big problem”, and the decrease in foreign military aid affects the battlefield.
“The quantities we have today are not enough for us today, considering our needs. So, we redistribute it. We are rescheduling the tasks that we had set ourselves and reducing them because we have to provide them (ammunition),” he said, without elaborating.
The comments highlight Kyiv’s dependence on Western military aid to fight Russian troops on a 1,000km front nearly 22 months into Europe’s biggest conflict since the start of World War II.
Russian forces are also facing ammunition problems, O. Tarnavskis said, without specifying their nature.
Exhausted Ukrainian troops on the southeastern front have gone on the defensive in some areas, but are trying to attack in others, he said.
Wikipedia/Oleksandr Tarnavski and Volodymyr Zelenski
According to him, the Ukrainian forces are still hoping for victories, but they would benefit from having reserves that would help them rotate and rest.
“We’ve gone (on defense) in some areas, and in some areas we’re continuing to attack, maneuvering, shooting and moving forward.” And we are preparing our reserves for further large-scale actions,” he said.
Russia’s changing tactics
O. Tarnavskis, the commander of the “Taurija” operational group, led the counterattack, which in 2022 pushed Russian troops out of the southern city of Kherson and west of the Dnieper River in November—Kiev’s last major battlefield success.
He also played an important role in this year’s larger-scale offensive in the southeastern region of Zaporizhia.
Russia attacks in the east and tries to surround the strategically important eastern city of Avdijivka, whose defense is overseen by O. Tarnavski.
“Their (Russian forces) intentions remain (the same). Only their actions, tactics change… attacks are carried out constantly,” he said.
The situation in Avdijivka is changing “every day and every night,” he said, with Russian forces constantly changing their tactics after achieving “partial success in some areas at a depth of about 1.5-2 km.”
“I think we’re sticking to those lines today,” he said. – Today, the enemy is pressing us with their numbers. They have never cared and never will care about their staff.”
Avdijivka is widely seen as vital to Russia’s quest to fully control the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, two of the four regions of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed but does not fully control.
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2024-08-01 02:07:06
