Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
—
Soldiers on Ukraine’s front lines say the prospect of final US Congress approval of a $60 billion military aid package for Kiev will be a major morale boost as Russia looks to ramp up its offensive. .
The Ukraine aid bill passed by the US House of Representatives on Saturday is scheduled to be introduced in the Senate on Tuesday. President Joe Biden said that if passed by the Senate, he would immediately sign the bill, saying it would “quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet urgent needs on the battlefield.”
Ukraine’s wish list is no secret. At the top are artillery shells and air defense systems.
Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines have been saying for months that Russian forces are severely outgunned. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy recently stated that the ratio is 10 to 1 in Russia’s favor.
“We need ammunition to win…our artillery is starving,” the 110th Mechanized Brigade’s artillery reconnaissance commander, call sign “Teren,” told CNN after Saturday’s vote.
Teren knows what he’s talking about, having spent two years defending the industrial city of Avdiivka before it fell to the Russians in February. Since then, Moscow’s forces have advanced further west with considerable success.
Highlighting just one of several locations in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian surveillance group Deep State has launched a series of Russian advances along a railway line into the center of a large village called Ocheretyn. I tracked it down last week.
Oceretine itself has no strategic value, but its location on a ridge makes it a desirable military objective. An officer with Ukraine’s Eastern Army, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record, told CNN that if Russian forces were to succeed in capturing and holding the village, it would open up a key logistics route in Ukraine connecting three major armies. He said there is a possibility that it will happen. Bases – Kostyantinivka, Pokrovsk, Velika Novoshirka – under Russian fire control.
Now, with only a few days left before new U.S. military aid is approved, the question is how quickly and in the best possible way will critical ammunition like 155mm howitzer shells be available to thwart the Russian advance? The question is whether they can reach the front lines.
Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder, speaking last week ahead of the House vote, said the Pentagon is “ready to respond quickly” to any order.
“As you know, we have a very robust logistics network that allows us to transport materials quickly. As before, we can move within a few days,” he said. I did.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner echoed that message, telling CBS News on Sunday that he hoped the supplies would be “transported by the end of the week.”
Although U.S. officials won’t say so publicly, U.S. sources familiar with the provision of military aid to Ukraine say much of it is already pre-positioned in storage facilities in Germany and Poland, making it clear that He said the time required for assistance would be reduced. Bring it to Ukraine. The official also said that shells would be among the first materials to be advanced.
Once across the border, authorities in Kiev will try to get the goods where they need to go as quickly as possible, but the sheer volume of supplies required still poses considerable challenges in transporting them.
In other words, the 10:1 advantage Russia currently enjoys is not going away anytime soon.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that Ukraine is “likely to continue to face shortages of artillery ammunition and air defense interceptor weapons in the coming weeks, and these shortages will threaten Ukraine’s ability to conduct effective defensive operations.” “They will face corresponding constraints that will be imposed.”
ISW said Russia may be trying to attack transportation networks such as railways to complicate logistics, which it targeted in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Friday, and that aid from the United States We speculate that they are trying to accelerate the front-line fighting in the limited time frame until the arrival of the US Navy.
One potential focus of Russia’s immediate offensive efforts could be the town of Chasiv Yar, which has become an important forward military base for Ukraine since Russia’s occupation of Bakhmut. East – almost a year ago.
Reports from Ukrainian soldiers say heavy fighting is occurring in a series of villages between Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut as Russian forces attempt to advance. A Ukrainian military commander said he believed the Kremlin had ordered the town to be captured by May 9, the day Russia celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
Chasif Yar has also been attacked from above by huge “guided” bombs dropped by Russian fighter jets. Analyst Rob Lee has posted a series of videos to his X account in recent days showing Russian Su-25 jets flying unimpeded over the city. He called it “a clear sign that Ukraine is running out of air defense ammunition.”
Anatoly Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
On April 11, 2024, smoke rises from an explosion near the town of Chasiv Yar in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Ukraine wants the United States to provide more interceptors for the Patriot air defense system, the main means of defeating missile attacks on cities and key infrastructure, as well as a variety of surface-to-air missile systems to counter that threat. Probably. Power plant.
“We need front-line air defense as much as we need to protect cities and villages,” Zelenskiy said.
Finally, Chairman Warner of the Senate Intelligence Committee said that in addition to its immediate arms needs, Ukraine is likely to receive the Long Range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) in the first phase of arms deliveries. As the chairman of the committee, Mr. Warner, indicated that ATACMS will participate, the first shipment will be made.
The United States has already provided Ukraine with a short-range version of ATACMS, but Ukrainian authorities have made no secret of their desire to obtain a new model. The missile, which has a range of about 300 kilometers (186 miles), will give Kiev the ability to step up attacks on Russian airfields, fuel depots and weapons caches, and will have a more long-term impact on Russia’s war effort.
And if Ukraine’s European allies think there may be some breathing room before they are again asked for more aid, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the US move gives momentum to the whole He made it clear that he thought it was a thing.
“If we act fearlessly and together, we can avoid the worst-case scenario,” he told an online meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers on Monday, urging countries deploying Patriot and European SAMP/T air defense systems. He appealed as follows: It will be donated to Ukraine along with artillery and ammunition.
“Now that you all have a seat at the table, it’s not time to debate, it’s time to act,” Kleba said.
CNN’s Andy Carey reported from Kiev. Victoria Butenko, Daria Tarasova-Markina and Svitlana Vlasova contributed to the report.
