Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Concern is growing in the US government about its inability to keep supplying Ukraine with state-of-the-art systems and ammunition amid its conflict with Russia, CNN reported on Thursday.

According to three US officials interviewed by the outlet, some of the challenges the US is facing in terms of supporting Ukraine include its “dwindling” stockpiles of arms and the ability of the defense industry to cope with demand. One official told CNN that there is a “finite amount” of excess stock that Washington can send to Kiev.

Washington is particularly concerned about the available stockpiles of 155mm artillery shells and Stinger air defense missiles, the report says. Some officials are also worried about the production of arms such as HARMs anti-radiation missiles, GMLRS surface-to-surface missiles, and Javelin anti-tank systems.

CNN’s sources maintain, however, that the dent in the stockpiles does not compromise national security, given that the weapons for Ukraine do not come from the supplies the Pentagon reserves for its own contingencies. A senior official also told the outlet that the assessment that the US is “running low” on arms is subjective, as it depends on how much risk the Pentagon is prepared to accept.

Russian strikes have hit a number of key targets in Ukraine, with a facility used for making missiles among the infrastructures destroyed, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Friday. 

The Russian military delivered “a focused strike with long-range precision weapons fired from air, sea and surface platforms” on targets in Ukraine, the ministry said in a briefing. It described the attacked sites as belonging to Kiev’s “military control system, military-industrial complex and associated fuel and energy infrastructure.”

Among the targets hit were “facilities used for manufacturing rockets” and an ammo depot with “artillery pieces supplied by Western nations and prepared for delivery to troops.” The strikes disrupted the Ukrainian army’s logistics, the ministry assessed.

The Ukrainian gas giant Naftogaz reported on Thursday that Russia had attacked gas extraction facilities during the Thursday raid, with at least two sites destroyed and others damaged. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal reported a strike at the missile producer Yuzhmash in the city of Dnepr in the south-eastern part of Ukraine.

The Russian military started targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in early October, after a deadly explosion damaged the Crimean Bridge. Moscow pinned the blame for the truck bombing on Ukrainian military intelligence and stated that it was just the most resent Ukrainian attempt to damage civilian infrastructure in Russia.

The airstrikes have significantly degraded the Ukrainian energy system, forcing operators to introduce rolling blackouts. The head of the electricity provider of Kiev Region warned this week that, in some areas, scheduled outages may need to be replaced with scheduled periods of service due to worsening shortages.

German Panzerhaubitze 2000 artillery guns are failing to withstand the rigors of combat in Ukraine, and Berlin hasn’t sourced enough spare parts to keep the cannons working, Der Spiegel reported.

Germany has sent Ukraine 14 of its state-of-the-art Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000 self-propelled howitzers, but problems emerged the moment they hit the battlefield. The guns were suffering  from “wear and tear” and displaying error messages back in July, and six were recently sent to Lithuania for repair, the German newspaper reported on Friday.

Of these, only five will be heading back to the battlefield. Neither the German military nor its arms industry could provide the necessary spare parts to fix all the guns, the report continued, explaining that technicians had to cannibalize one of them to fix the others.

As fighting rages on in Ukraine, President Vladimir Zelensky seems determined to consolidate power. It's part of a process that began long before Russia launched its military offensive in February. 

The Western-backed leader has suppressed criticism and clamped down on the opposition; beyond that, he is purging the political arena of allegedly ‘disloyal’ people who, until recently, had appeared to be close associates and allies. For example not long ago, Prosecutor-General Irina Venediktova and the head of Ukraine’s Security Service Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelensky, were both fired from their posts. However, it appears that the president remains deeply vulnerable to political intrigues within the country’s elites.

In light of recent developments, both Western and Ukrainian media often claim Kiev's military is dissatisfied with the situation in the country. Journalists have even named a possible post-conflict successor to the ‘Ukrainian Churchill,’ as Zelensky is sometimes called – namely, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valery Zaluzhny.

Zelensky himself dismisses these claims as speculation, an attempt to promote hostile narratives and ‘rock the boat.’