Ukraine’s Allies Struggle To Supply Weapons To Kiev As A Difficult Winter Looms

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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher

Ukraine’s allies are struggling to fulfil their own promises to deliver military supplies to Kiev while the volume of Russian military equipment production exceeds that of the West, Bloomberg writes, citing sources. This is creating concerns since Ukraine does not have the means to defend its energy infrastructure, with another difficult winter just weeks away.

“Ukrainian allies meanwhile are scrambling to meet pledges made earlier this year to beef up the war-battered nation’s air-defence systems. Several NATO allies have yet to follow through with commitments reaffirmed at the alliance’s summit in Washington in July,” the report said.

Along with the difficulties of supplying military equipment to Kiev, the agency highlighted the Russian economy’s ability to ensure the production of defence equipment, including missiles and ammunition, in a quantity that exceeds the West’s ability to send weapons to Ukrainian forces.

According to the cited sources, the Ukrainian Army is facing a shortage of weapons and is unable to contain the advance of Russian troops into the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic amid the failed attempt to weaken Moscow’s offensive through Ukraine’s attack on the Kursk region and the observed reduction in Ukraine’s power generation capacity following the destruction of energy infrastructure.

“The developments amount to a grim moment for Ukraine, which has lost a significant swathe of its power-generating capacity as citizens increasingly rely on diesel generators grapple with prolonged blackouts. The prospect of restoring power before the heating season is growing more challenging,” Bloomberg reported.

The Kremlin believes that arms deliveries to Ukraine prevent a deal from being reached and also means that NATO countries are directly involved in the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has noted that any shipments containing weapons to Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. His warning comes as Russia is managing to continue supplying its troops, a far cry from the predictions that sanctions would collapse Russian manufacturing.

“Russia’s war economy has been able to produce missiles and ammunition at a tempo that often outpaces that of Ukrainian allies’ ability to ship weapons. Moscow has also been able to rely on deliveries from countries like Iran and North Korea, while sustaining its own manufacturing capacity with technology and key components from nations including China,” the outlet explained.

Moscow has ramped up its production of artillery rounds, missiles and drones, while the US and its allies have little to show for their extensive sanctions to try and stop access to key parts needed to build weapons. In 2021, Russia produced 56 Kh-101 cruise missiles a year but by last year, had manufactured 460 cruise missiles, while Russia’s stock of Iskander ballistic missiles also increased dramatically, from about 50 before the special military operation to 180, even though the Russian military launched large numbers of the missiles on the battlefield.

Bloomberg highlighted that “Ukrainian forces are struggling to halt a Russian advance in the eastern Donetsk region as its cities and energy infrastructure has come under a sustained bombing campaign with the third full winter of the war looming,” adding, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been pushing allies to ramp up supplies and lift restrictions on deep strikes into Russian territory. His government has argued that such attacks are necessary to hit airfields and launchers used for assaults on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.”

Although Ukraine is still experiencing hot weather, continuous Russian strikes on energy infrastructure create worries that the country will experience a third, perhaps the most difficult, winter in recent history. Even before Russia’s major strikes on distribution infrastructure, such as electricity substations, at the end of August, around half of Ukraine’s energy capacity was already destroyed. Zelenskiy said in June that Russia had destroyed 80% of Ukraine’s thermal energy generation and a third of its hydro generation, which adds to the Kiev regime’s desperation to receive increased air defence support and weapons from Western allies.

“It’s not easy to improve the situation but additional attacks can cause it to worsen,” said Andrian Prokip, a Kiev-based energy expert with the Kennan Institute in Washington DC. “Even in the best-case scenario there will be scheduled cutoffs. How they look will depend on the temperature. If we have -5 [degrees Celsius], a schedule of seven hours off, two hours on could be expected.”

With Russian forces rapidly advancing in Donbass, the best-case scenario for Ukrainians, who will once again suffer in the winter, is for the Kiev regime to finally begin negotiations and acknowledge the reality that they cannot reverse their fortunes. This, for now, seems unlikely, even though Ukraine does not have enough troops or Western weapons to have any hope of victory over Russia, thus ensuring that Ukrainian citizens will experience a third brutal winter.

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