US military artillery shells have reached frontline Ukrainian units and have started to break Russian battlefield momentum.
Lt Gen Ivan Havrylyuk, Ukraine’s first deputy defence minister, said that the ammunition resupply had been critical but that most of the equipment pledged by the US in April was still in transit.
“It takes time to load ships that must then cross the Atlantic,” he said. “But we are already seeing the results.”
The war in Ukraine has turned into a war of attrition with artillery shell volumes playing a major role, to the Kremlin’s advantage. It has ramped up shell production and organised supplies from North Korea but Gen Havrylyuk said that this advantage had already fallen to five-to-one from seven-to-one.
“With time, when we set everything up, we will reach an advantage,” he said.
Russia has been on the offensive along the front line since October but even hardcore pro-war Russian military bloggers have now admitted that this momentum is stalling and its successes are more limited.