[Skybird]

Deutsche Welle (German edition):
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How can Ukraine replace Soviet weapons systems and ammunition? Kiev would like to have more NATO systems, but their use poses problems. The army receives most of its weapons from Russia - as spoils of war.

Switzerland again said no. In early November, the government in Bern turned down Berlin's request to transfer Swiss-made 35-mm ammunition for German Gepard tanks to Ukraine. A similar response, citing neutrality, had already been given in June. This time, according to media reports, Germany wanted to hand over 12,400 rounds of ammunition for the anti-aircraft tank. So far, Germany has delivered 30 of the decommissioned Bundeswehr tanks to Ukraine, where they are also used against drones. It was already known before the delivery that there was not enough ammunition for them.

The news shows how difficult it is for Ukraine to upgrade from Soviet to NATO weapons. Kiev received initial Western arms deliveries in the years leading up to the Russian incursion in February, and they accelerated in the weeks before. But the Kiev government did not speak of a massive rearmament until the spring. "We are in a fundamentally new phase that no one dared to dream of," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Facebook in April. "It is about a conversion of the Ukrainian army to NATO weapons, NATO standard. This is already happening."

Exactly where the conversion stands in the ninth month of the war is unknown. The fact is that Ukraine is receiving more and more weapons from the West. But overall, deliveries are limited. For modern heavy technology, the number is in the single digits - such as the IRIS-T anti-aircraft systems from Germany and NASAMS from the U.S. delivered in recent weeks. Howitzers from NATO countries and the U.S. multiple rocket launcher HIMARS have been delivered by the dozens. Kiev received older systems, such as the U.S. M113 armored personnel carrier, by the hundreds.

"The critical point with Western weapons is a system of maintenance, repair and supply," says Ukrainian military expert Serhij Hrabskyj. "It is much more extensive than the weapons use itself." That appears to be one of the reasons why the retooling is happening more slowly than Kiev would like. Structures are being built to maintain Western technology not in Ukraine itself, but in neighboring NATO countries.

Another "problem with Western warfare equipment is the fact that there are several types of the same weapons - American, British, French, German, Swedish," Hrabskyj says. The standard is the same, he says, but there are differences in maintenance. Markus Reisner, a colonel with the Austrian General Staff Service, also confirms this. "The Ukrainians have so far managed to handle the delivered systems in a very sensible way. The challenge is logistics: you have a whole butterfly collection of different weapons systems," Reisner says. "There's the difficulty of getting the right ammunition to the right weapon; Ukraine is a huge country."

All of the weapons from the West have one thing in common - they are short-range systems whose operational range is a few dozen kilometers. Kiev wants to receive long-range weapons, as well as Western aircraft and battle tanks. So far, this wish remains unfulfilled.

Most of the Ukrainian weapons consist of Soviet war technology, supplied mainly from Eastern and Central Europe - also because there are the logistics for it, military experts told DW. According to Serhij Hrabskyj, Ukraine's air force is made up exclusively of Soviet equipment, while its artillery is a mixture. The situation is similar with tanks and armored vehicles. There are exceptions, he said, but much of it is "de facto Soviet equipment."

The most recent example: in early November, the United States announced that, together with the Netherlands, it would deliver 90 modernized T-72 tanks from the Czech Republic to Ukraine. Earlier, Ukraine received hundreds of similar tanks from other countries, mainly Poland. Ammunition is also supplied. But the war is intense, the wear and tear great, as reports from the front confirm. "There is little technology, hardly any ammunition for Soviet caliber," Ukrainian filmmaker and soldier Oleh Senzov wrote on Facebook in early August about his deployment to Bachmut in eastern Ukraine. "NATO systems are better, but there are not enough of them."

Could a critical moment soon come for Ukraine when Soviet stocks are getting thinner and Western supplies cannot yet replace them? There is a discussion about it in social networks, there are no official data, because this information is secret. "One bottleneck has been very observable, which was heavy anti-aircraft missiles for the Buk-M1 and S-300 systems," says Gustav Gressel, a military expert at the Berlin-based European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). "When the Russians have attacked with cruise missiles or the like, Ukraine has shot down only two, three out of eight or 10 missiles, simply because they have hardly any ammunition." Since the delivery of the IRIS-T and NASAMS air defense systems, Ukraine has been able to shoot down significantly more, he said. Recently, some NATO countries decided to supply Ukraine with older air defense systems as well, such as the U.S. HAWK.

Another sensitive question is how long Soviet munitions will last. Ukrainian stocks were already reduced before the war by a series of explosions at ammunition depots that were classified as sabotage. There is "not really much" Soviet weaponry left in Eastern Europe, Gressel says. "It depends on what you're talking about, but we're relatively through." However, weapons factories in some Eastern European countries can produce ammunition for Soviet guns, for example, even if they can't produce the guns themselves. But in many cases that is not the case: there is less and less ammunition for Soviet "Strela" and "Osa" anti-aircraft systems, which Kiev has also received from Eastern Europe, Gressel said.

Gressel calls Kiev's desire to switch completely to Western systems "a good and justified demand." This process could move faster if some countries, which the expert counts Germany among, would make political decisions more quickly.

Serhij Hrabsky finds it "uncritical" at the moment, should there be shortages of Soviet weapons stockpiles in Ukraine. "Who is the biggest arms supplier to Ukraine? Russia," the expert says of captured war technology. According to the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine, there is more captured technology in Ukraine than supplied by leading Western countries. By the end of September, Ukraine had captured about 400 Russian battle tanks and about 700 infantry fighting vehicles, he said. However, most of them were old models.
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