In a world of drones, Ukraine’s artillerymen rushed to defend Kharkiv

KHARKIV OBLAST, Ukraine — After tough months of fighting, Ukraine’s troops have been pushing Russian forces back in Kharkiv Oblast. “The situation is a little bit better … but we still fire one shell for every ten of theirs,” said Roman, an artillery gunner with the 406th Artillery Brigade, who gave only his first name in keeping with Kyiv’s military regulations.

A reporter visited troops at a staging base outside of Kharkiv city in late July, near where Russia’s military opened a new front line in May of this year. The assault caused near panic among Ukrainian forces, as Russian forces pushed over the border and steamrolled weak Ukrainian defenses.

A determined defense by some of Ukraine’s best troops halted the Russian advance at the towns of Vovchansk and Lyptsy. Now, the tide is turning, thanks in no small part to donated Western arms like the towed M777 howitzer, a weapon considered a relic of past wars just a few years ago.

The M777′s had their own special type of advanced ammunition that was initially used to great effect. Artillery units fired GPS-guided Excalibur shells with pinpoint accuracy, taking out crucial Russian nodes and complicating the invaders’ advances. Meanwhile, in Washington, U.S. officials loosened caveats that had previously prevented Ukrainian forces to target Russian units shooting across the border, lifting a key limitation on organizing defenses here.

Vitali Sarantsev, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, said: “It gave us the chance to hold them, and slow their advance. They don’t feel comfortable on border territories, so they can’t mass troops without big problems. Basically, it gives [us] an opportunity to destroy them deeply into their territory, so they can’t properly prepare.”

By now, however, Russians forces have managed to throw a wrench into the calculus of Western high-tech weaponry working its magic. Russian electronic warfare systems have vastly improved, and they are now able to jam technology like the one guiding Excalibur.

Without a satellite connection, the vaunted rounds amount to expensive pieces of metal. “It is firing but it is not exploding,” said Roman. “So, it lands, and it is like a dud.”

The M777′s still use standard, unguided explosive rounds, making them an important weapon. But they do not have the outsized impact they did when they were first introduced.

The wider significance of this is that Western assumptions about technological superiority have a limited shelf life here.

Recently introduced ATACMS missiles, supplied by the United States, are still working, but many analysts believe it is just a matter of time until the Russians discover countermeasures to these most advanced technologies.

“Warfare is about the speed of adaptation,” former Air Marshal Edward Stringer, a British Defense official, told the Wall Street Journal. “If you drip-feed an antibiotic weekly, you’ll actually train the pathogen — and we have trained the pathogen. … We didn’t need to give them that time, but we did.”

The NATO standard weapons still have an important advantage over their older, Soviet counterparts. For one, they are lighter, and more maneuverable – Ukrainian soldiers pack and unpack an M777 in and out of firing positions in about 90 seconds. When not firing, the equipment is meticulously camouflaged.

But the artillerymen here predict the days of their weapons are numbered. When Ukraine was suffering from a huge ammunition shortage, mainly due to a deadlock in the U.S. Congress and a reluctance by Republicans to approve additional military aid, Ukraine plugged the gaps in its artillery consumption with drones. Now the skies over the battlefield are saturated with Mavics, first-person-view drones, Vampyrs and all types of cheap gadgetry, many of them repurposed from civilian models that can be bought on Amazon.

Aerial drones have become so omnipresent on the battlefield that they match artillery in the amount of enemy armor destroyed and fighters killed. Crucially, they also don’t depend on the domestic political whims of Ukraine’s Western allies.

The soldiers here claim that there are still many advantages to artillery over drones. For example, artillery can hit targets much more quickly, and the shells have enough explosive power to crack armored vehicles. In addition, a hail of artillery is utterly terrifying, dealing a profoundly shocking effect on enemy morale that drones cannot yet match.

While the Ukrainians have stabilized the frontlines near Kharkiv, Russian forces are on the march elsewhere.

They have recently made territorial gains in the Donetsk region and have pushed close to the crucial logistics hub of Pokrovsk. Moscow’s forces have taken enormous casualties but appear to be able to afford them.

“As long as we have enough ammunition here, we will be fighting until the victory,” Roman, the artillery commander says.

It is a familiar refrain, repeated dozens of times on this battlefield. Every time, it is said more wearily, and slightly less hopefully than the last. When we ask the soldiers what they need from the West, the answer is the same all around: shells.

The soldiers here have accepted the logic of a bitter war of attrition, where one side will grind down the other. Despite that dynamic, none of the service members interviewed here are ready to entertain the thought of a peace deal that would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia – or at least nobody will admit to it.

A poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that more than 30% of Ukrainians were now willing to consider giving Ukrainian territory to Russia for an end to the fighting.

Roman’s soldiers were contemptuous of this idea. When asked what he thought of people who suggested ceding territory for peace, one of them grinned and said, “I want to punch those people in the face.”

Meanwhile, in Kharkiv city, urban Ukrainian life continues. A bridal party that had just celebrated a wedding – a half-hour affair for close friends and family so as to not present a target for Russian missiles – could be seen in the streets on a warm evening in late July, as the sounds of birdsong and casual conversation mixed with the wail of an air raid siren in the background.

These worries didn’t deter large crowds from packing into bars and clubs lining Kharkiv’s main streets. “If a bomb fell in the street next to us, people would turn their heads to have a look, and then go back to their partying,” one reveler said.

The fight for their right to party here is entirely down to men like Roman holding the frontline against a seemingly unending stream of Russian soldiers.