Ukraine targets Russia’s ammo depots, undermining its artillery advantage

As a result, by July 7, Russia had lost most of its key ammunition depots, and many of its smaller depots in occupied Donbas. Notably, many key targets as much as 50-80 kilometers into Russian-controlled territory have been successfully destroyed.

This suggests that, along with Western-made rocket systems, Ukraine has also managed to improve its reconnaissance, situational awareness, and target indication, to the point of being able to identify targets even of medium importance deep in Russian-occupied areas.

According to Russian military bloggers, such as the notorious Russian ultranationalist Igor Girkin, these “unpunished” Ukrainian strikes have already forced the Russian military to be more conservative with its artillery rounds, in preparation for a possible Ukrainian counter-strike in Donbas. In early July, another Russian military blogger Andrey Morozov (widely known as “Murz”) indicated growing “munitions hunger” due to Ukrainian attacks, not only in terms of 122-millimeter rounds but also 152-millimeter systems, which are also waning. Russia’s overwhelming artillery dominance, in terms of the number of pieces and its seemingly infinite supply of ammunition, is a key factor behind its painful advances in Donbas.

According to Ukraine’s data, Russia’s supply of artillery outnumbers Ukraine’s by 10 to 1. Before Ukraine acquired Western-provided NATO-standard 105- and 155-millimeter artillery systems and munitions, the disparity between rounds fired daily by Ukraine’s and Russia’s units in some cases reached 50 to 1,500, respectively, according to sources in Ukraine’s military.