Russian Artillery Advantage Weakening as Ukraine Gains Ground in Firepower Balance

The Kremlin’s sometimes overwhelming firepower advantage on the front line in Ukraine seems to be falling, with Russian ground and air forces launching distinctly fewer artillery shells and bombs at Ukrainian defenses, news reports and independent analysts said on Friday.

Britain’s Sky News citing “Western officials” said Russian cannon, howitzers and rocket artillery currently are able to fire only about one and a half times as many munitions than their Ukrainian opposition – a dramatic drop in Russia’s weight of fire advantage.

During the summer in those sectors seen to be high priority the imbalance gave a five to one Russian firepower advantage at times.

Ukrainian mainstream and social media information feeds monitored by Kyiv Post generally confirmed that although Russian forces still seemed to have more munitions available to shoot at their Ukrainian opponents than the other way around, in many sectors of the front the relative weight of artillery fire was approaching parity.

During battles in sectors backed by heavy artillery brigades armed with NATO-standard artillery outranging Russian guns, Ukrainian forces have at times even achieved temporary firepower superiority with disastrous results for Russian assaults.

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The drop in the quantity of shells fired by Russia, according to the Sky report result from limitations in Russia's defense production, difficulties with ammunition rail transportation to the front line, and strikes by Ukrainian drones on strategic Russian and North Korean ammunition stockpiles inside Russia.

Front-line observers also point to Ukraine’s superiority in battlefield observation and FPV attack drones, whose pilots hunt Russia’s howitzers day and night as a top priority target. The preferred tactic for taking out a multi-million-dollar gun system is to fly drone into the muzzle of the artillery piece if possible, before detonating its payload.

Increased deliveries of artillery rounds through the Czechia-led coalition of Ukrainian allies which has jointly sourced and purchased munitions for Kyiv’s military also has helped shifted the balance of firepower away from overwhelming Russian dominance and closer to parity, the Sky report said.

In late 2023 Prague launched an appeal to European NATO members for collective funding, purchase and production aimed at securing half a million artillery shells for Ukraine’s military. The initiative stalled for close to six months because of disputes about payment shares and what proportion of the munitions might be sourced from outside of Europe.

Those conflicts had largely been settled and on Nov. 23 Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told reporters during a visit to Kyiv that the plan was back on track and that the promised quantities would be delivered by the end of the year.

Since early 2024 Russian forces, possibly because of their shrinking artillery advantage, have increasingly deployed long-range glide bombs against Ukrainian positions. The powerful but relatively inaccurate weapons are launched with effective impunity, from outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses and mostly used to smash areas suspected of containing Ukrainian defenses.

Mass production of glide bomb kits combined with the Russian Air Force’s numerical advantage being orders of magnitude greater than that of Ukraine in recent months saw as many as 150-200 glide bombs aimed at Ukrainian defenses daily.

Concentrated glide bomb strikes over days and sometimes weeks have helped the Russian army break through long-held major Ukrainian fortifications, most recently around the town Vuhledar, which Kyiv’s forces had defended successfully since early 2022.

According to official Ukrainian army counts, however, the quantity of Russian glide bomb strikes in November had fallen by about half, from October’s daily high of 150-180 weapons dropped to less than 100 and on some days less than 50.

“This is a significant decline in Russian capabilities. It is probably connected to several factors at once - first of all, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ strikes on Russian arsenals, as well as the withdrawal of aircraft to more distant airfields for fear of strikes on them,” Baku-based military analyst Agil Rustamzade said on Friday.

Analysts generally agree the increasing strike counts in the summer were because of greater Russian glider bomb production supported by a more intensive sortie rate by Russian aerospace forces.

The most likely reasons for the distinct contraction in bombs dropped in November are aircraft wear, pilot fatigue and successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian ammunition depots containing glider bombs, and elements of the Russian logistics chain.

Unable to launch its own bomber strikes into Russia, Ukraine’s military has accelerated production of long-range drones, and by the fall was launching kamikaze aircraft raids against targets deep inside the Russian Federation, at times as far as 1,800 kilometers (1,125 miles) from probable launch sites in Ukraine.

The most common targets of those attacks have been Russian oil refineries and major Russian ammunition depots. One of the most successful Ukrainian drone strikes against a Russian ammunition storage site took place on Sept. 23 in Russia’s Bryansk region, destroying ammunition bunkers and setting fires that burned for more than week. According to reports and subsequent satellite images, thousands of artillery shells as well as aerial bombs and missiles were lost to Moscow’s forces.

In recent months Ukrainian drones also have hit munitions storage sites in Russia’s Kursk and Tver’ regions, as well as another strike against the Bryansk ammunition depot on Oct. 9 using US-made ATACMS missiles, according to some news reports.