Even a month ago, the deputy head of the Ukrainian intelligence service said that Ukraine is losing to Russia on the front and is completely dependent on the West for weapons to stop the advance of Russian troops. In a statement for "The Guardian", Vadim Skibitski said "this is now an artillery war. The future will be decided at the front, he said."
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said yesterday that "Russia really has a big advantage in artillery". At a press conference, together with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, he appealed to all allies for help. "I'm talking about artillery. We really don't have enough," he said. A spokesman for the Ukrainian International Legion, a combat unit made up of foreign soldiers, also said that Ukrainian heavy artillery was outnumbered eight to one by Russian artillery.
However, the question is whether the West will be able to meet Kiev's demands since the war in Ukraine has exposed the paucity of Western defense supplies, especially in terms of basic weapons.
"Financial Times" recalls that when Washington ordered 1300 anti-aircraft missiles of the "Stinger" type in May to replace the ones it sent to Ukraine from the company Raytion, which manufactures them, they said they would need a certain amount of time.
Paris, meanwhile, has sent 18 "Caesar" howitzers to Kiev - a quarter of the total supply of this high-tech artillery - but it will take the French company Nexter about 18 months to produce new ones.
The situation in Ukraine, according to defense officials and analysts, shows the predominance of the West regarding potential threats since the end of the Cold War, as a result of which there are now insufficient basic supplies, such as artillery shells, which are the mainstay of the fighting.
The total annual U.S. production of 155 mm artillery shells, for example, would last less than two weeks in Ukraine, said Alex Vershinin, a U.S. procurement expert who sees the conflict as "a return to industrial warfare."
A lack of manufacturing capacity, labor shortages and supply chain deficiencies - especially computer chips - mean that certain weapons take a long time to produce.
"Ukraine is a lesson about how war is still won through the classic elements of artillery, ground forces and occupation," Jamie Shea, former head of political planning at NATO, and now a collaborator at the British analytical organization Chatham House, told "FT". "The military balance that shifted from the old to the new should be restored".
Ben Wallace, the British defense minister, said that Western countries would find it difficult to wage a prolonged war like Russia's attack on Ukraine because their ammunition stocks "are not adequate for the threats we face." During military exercises last year, British ammunition was exhausted in just eight days.
Experts say that no one claims that the West will run out of basic weapons due to the supply of Ukraine, especially if one takes into account that the total defense budget of NATO members exceeds 1,1 billion dollars, which is unpredictably more than the 66 billion it was last year. Russia's defense budget, and even compared to the 293 billion dollars that China spends on defense annually.
However, NATO spends a huge part of that money on expensive defense systems, "FT" points out, such as bombers that the West did not send to Ukraine. Much of the defense over the past 20 years has been directed by the West into fighting insurgencies in the Middle East rather than preparing for tank and artillery conflicts like those in Ukraine.
In Britain, the doomed stockpile meant the country had to buy the howitzers from a third party to ship to Ukraine, reportedly from a private Belgian dealer. In the United States, the Pentagon cooperates with only five major defense companies, compared to 1990 in the 51s.
"The conventional wisdom was that the West would never wage an industrial war again," said one Western defense adviser. "As a result, almost no one maintained the capacity to accelerate national production of key equipment."
Western weapons manufacturers are trying to secure supplies of components and materials for the production of weapons and ammunition, which until recently almost no one asked for. Some of the electronic components of the Stinger missiles, which were last produced on a large scale 20 years ago, are no longer commercially available, Raytion said.
The prevailing opinion was that the west would never lead an industrial war again. As a result, almost no one maintained the capacity to accelerate the national production of key equipment".
Russia also has supply problems, officials and analysts said. Manufacturer UralVagonZavod reportedly works in three shifts to restore old tanks.
Ammunition stocks are being partially replenished from a huge warehouse in Belarus, the FT writes.
But the appointment of Gen. Gennady Zhidek, a former deputy defense minister, as commander of Russian forces in Ukraine has given the military "institutional power in Moscow ... so it has a strong voice to get the funding it needs," said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia based in Britain.
Military experts are closely monitoring the conflict in Ukraine to gain insight into the nature of modern warfare. The "number one" lesson is the importance of maintaining basic supplies, said Jack Wettling of the Royal Institute.
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