As Fighting Rages in Ukraine, a Struggle Is On for Artillery Supremacy

With President Biden in France rallying support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia, ammunition and weaponry from an aid package approved by Congress this spring is arriving at the front in quantities sufficient to help stabilize defenses, soldiers and commanders said in interviews.

Russia, though, still holds an artillery advantage, which has been key in the war in Ukraine.

Lt. Denys Yaroslavsky, a commander in northeastern Ukraine, where Russian forces attacked across the border last month and threatened to advance toward Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, said on Thursday that Ukrainian artillery crews could now fire more frequently at Russian forces.

The Russian advance has largely stalled. But to the south of Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Russia has renewed assaults on Ukrainian lines.

Overall, the front line has not shifted significantly in more than two weeks, despite fierce and bloody fighting, according to soldiers on the front, military reports and satellite maps of the battlefield compiled by independent monitoring groups.

Here is a look at the state of the battlefield.

Kharkiv Region

Russia attacked across the border into northeastern Ukraine on May 10, raising fears that its forces might advance to Kharkiv, or at least within artillery range of the city. Bringing artillery pieces like howitzers closer to Kharkiv would allow Russian forces to bombard the city more intensely and effectively. At present, Russia has to rely on longer-range aerial bombs and missiles, which are more expensive than artillery shells.

But to get within artillery range, the Russian Army would need to push at least as far again as it has in the past three weeks.

Russian troops advanced about six miles into Ukraine before getting bogged down when they confronted more heavily fortified Ukrainian positions, according to Ukrainian commanders. The commanders also said that more Ukrainian troops had arrived to blunt the Russian advance, and that more American ammunition was reaching frontline positions.

By last week, Ukrainian forces had enough ammunition to hold Russia at its current position, Lieutenant Yaroslavsky said in an interview. “Our artillery is hitting concentrations” of Russian troops, he said.

Fighting is most fierce in the streets of Vovchansk, a town about four miles south of the Russian border that is divided between the two armies, according to the Kharkiv regional military administration. After four weeks of fighting, the town is deserted and mostly destroyed.

Still, Ukraine may be able to retain positions its soldiers hold in the town, where they are fighting from basements and in the ruins of buildings, by disrupting Russian logistics nearby with strikes inside Russia, Lieutenant Yaroslavsky said. In a policy shift last week, the Biden administration, along with half a dozen other Western allies of Ukraine, allowed such strikes using the weaponry they have supplied to Ukrainian forces.

“Before, our artillery batteries were being very cautious with the number of shells they could use and would not try to fire at just a few Russian soldiers,” Lieutenant Yaroslavsky said. He said that the artillery had changed tactics, and was now again targeting attacks on the Ukrainian lines by small Russian units.

Lt. Oleksandr Buktar of Ukraine’s National Guard, who is fighting near the village of Lyptsi, said he was awakened on Wednesday around 7 a.m. by a radio message: A unit of seven Russians had reached a Ukrainian trench, and a gun battle was raging. In an interview, he described such battles as common. “We have two or three infantry attacks daily,” he said.

Lieutenant Buktar said he responded with a practiced procedure, highlighting the importance of artillery ammunition. He ordered a drone to fly over the trench, and then ordered his artillery to hit the area just in front of the Ukrainian trenches, where the Russians were advancing. “We use everything we have,” he said of the artillery ammunition.

Donbas Region

Russia’s strategy of opening a new front north of Kharkiv, according to Ukrainian and Western military analysts, was aimed at stretching Ukraine’s limited forces and weakening defenses to the south, in the industrial and farming region of the Donbas.

Russian forces have been pressing forward in the region in small and slow-moving but bloody steps.

After capturing the Donbas city of Bakhmut a year ago, Russia advanced about three miles over open fields to reach the eastern edge of the town of Chasiv Yar, but then stalled near an irrigation canal.

The defense of Chasiv Yar is seen as strategically significant, because the town is on high ground and its loss would open the door to further Russian advances into larger communities to the west and north. The last Russian ground movements toward Chasiv Yar came last week, according to satellite maps of the battlefield.

That lull was a sign, according to Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program, that Russian forces “haven’t capitalized on the Kharkiv offensive, even though they managed to get Ukraine to move a number of forces from the Donbas.”

The southern Donbas has been the scene of the most intensive fighting in recent weeks, according to the satellite maps.

By capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the Russians broke through a first defensive line, and they have battered their way forward since, taking village after village. They have yet to reach a second line of Ukrainian defenses, near the village of Karlivka.

Overnight Wednesday to Thursday, the Russian Army made another small advance in that direction near the village of Sokil, according to Ukrainian soldiers.

In that engagement, the Russians attacked the Ukrainian rear-guard near Sokil in an armored personnel carrier. Troops in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade tried to counterattack with an American-provided Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, according to a sergeant in the brigade who asked to be identified by his call sign, Sapsan. But the Bradley’s gun malfunctioned, and the Russians dismounted and attacked a position.

It was an example, Sapsan said, of Russia’s tactic of staging probing attacks to find weaknesses. Usually such attacks were “a one-way ticket for the soldiers” involved, he said. But, he added, they gave the Russians intelligence to prepare for attacks by larger forces.

“They are always doing this, poking our positions, and willing to destroy an armored personnel carrier and personnel to do so,” he said, referring to Russian losses. In contrast to the fighting north of Kharkiv, Sapsan said that in its Donbas campaign Russia had also staged larger, battalion-strength attacks with up to 500 men.

“The enemy does not stop advancing and continually shells our positions,” Col. Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern military command, said in an interview.

The Russians are now pushing toward two midsize towns, Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, and a highway between Pokrovsk and the town of Kostiantynivka that links the southern Donbas with towns in the north, he said.

Analysts said the arrival of Western aid had made it easier for Ukraine to defend its positions but had not yet had a decisive effect. “Biden’s decision made the main change not on the battlefield but among all other countries that followed the example,” said Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Mr. Lee said Russia retained a significant manpower and firepower advantage and was likely to remain on the offensive for most of the year. “But at some point,” he said, it could face a shortage of tanks and armored vehicles. “We’ve seen a really significant number of tanks and armored vehicles fighting on the Avdiivka front since October. And those rates of losses are probably not sustainable long term.”