Time and again since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there has been extended political wrangling among Western governments and Ukraine over purported wonder weapons that will turn the tide of the war. After the provision of main battle tanks, HIMARS rockets, and fighter jets, the most recent controversy has been over the use of deep strike (in actuality, short-range ballistic missile) ATACMS systems to hit targets in Russia. While ATACMS have had only a modest effect on the fierce fighting for the Kursk salient, the year-long back and forth over this weapons system has had a real impact on the larger war. The deep strike debate has enabled President Volodymyr Zelensky to avoid confronting the real crux of his country’s war: manpower.
As recently as September, Zelensky told U.S. senators that with enough U.S. missiles, he could bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. The Ukrainian president’s Western amplifiers have long made even more grandiose claims about the impact of Western firepower, despite the clear constraint of limited American and Ukrainian ATACMS stocks.
The six-month U.S. congressional stalemate that held up munitions shipments to Ukraine from late 2023 to mid-2024 led to Ukrainian losses of men and territory by inducing an enormous deficit of artillery ammunition. This was only partially mitigated by Ukraine’s burgeoning domestic drone production. But the situation in Ukraine has changed since last spring. Ukrainian forces now have parity and sometimes even a small firepower edge at important points on the 600-mile frontline. Ukraine’s shell hunger has been largely sated for the time being. Firepower and materiel are no longer the Russo-Ukrainian war’s center of gravity.
Read article in War on the Rocks
Author
Gil
Barndollar
Non-Resident Fellow
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