Those needs are already being felt.
“Ammunition stalling greatly impacts us on the battlefield,” said U.S. Army veteran Miro Popovich, a combat volunteer fighting in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region. Popovich, 34, said his unit was caught in heavy artillery fire a few weeks ago that lasted for two hours, but Ukrainian forces were unable to counter.
He suspects a shortage of ammunition was to blame. “We got out alive, but it left a little frustration that the enemy is able to do things like that unpunished,” Popovich said.
“It would have been great if American politicians stopped using Ukraine in pre-election games and just helped us to stop this great evil,” he added.
The most acute need right now is for artillery rounds, said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, but rationing is now occurring across many ammunition categories like tank rounds and rockets.
Another soldier serving in the infantry in the eastern Donbas region said that Ukrainian forces were aware of their heavy reliance on Western supplies and the dire future they faced with that support in doubt.
“Imagine a person injured in a car crash,” said the private, who goes by the call sign “Tatarin.”
“You have an option of either helping this person or wait a little until the medics arrive, and every minute for this person is their chance of survival,” he said. “It’s the same here. You can think about it for another week or two, but it all costs the lives of the soldiers on the front lines.”
The battle for Avdiivka — and beyond
The struggle Ukraine is facing has been evident in the fight for Avdiivka, a small eastern city that became the main flashpoint of the war over the winter.
The two sides fought over the battered town for months, but Russian forces seized it over the weekend. Avdiivka’s fall hands Putin a high-profile victory amid faltering Western support and ahead of his re-election next month. It also expands Russia’s control over Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, where Avdiivka serves as a gateway to the main city of Donetsk.
Last week, Kyiv appeared determined to keep fighting in the city, with street-to-street battles ongoing and one of its best-trained and battle-hardened units brought in as reinforcements. But on Saturday, the country’s new commander-in-chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said he was pulling his troops out to avoid being encircled and to “preserve the life and health of military personnel.”
Artillery sergeant Andriy was in Avdiivka since the fighting there intensified in October.
Like others NBC News spoke with, he said ahead of the withdrawal that Ukraine was running low on soldiers and that those it did have were exhausted and lacking supplies. “We have nearly no ammunition,” said Andriy, who was also not authorized to speak publicly.
Artillery has been crucial throughout the war, but some soldiers told NBC News they now faced restrictions limiting the duration and quality of fire, leaving their defensive positions vulnerable and severely outgunned by Russian units lacking neither supplies nor soldiers.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
