Kyiv: Russia is running out of ammunition and missiles
The head of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate, Kirill Budanov, said in a recent interview that Russia did not expect that the war would last long and used very significant amounts of ammunition at once.
According to him, closer to the fall, the Russians realized that they would not be able to supply their army with shells and weapons for a long time.
"They began to limit the amount of ammunition they used daily. Now the number has fallen to 19-20 thousand shells per day, and started with 60 thousand, that is, it has fallen threefold," Budanov said.
Budanov said that Ukraine does not experience any shortage of ammunition now.
"We used to get supplies of munitions from abroad and produced new ones ourselves. So, we will continue doing it, and Russia will have to rely only on their remaining stock of ammunition. By March, they will reach a critical state. And a small amount of what they will be able to get abroad will not help anything," he said.
Also, since early fall, Russian army has started experiencing “ammunition famine”. In particular, the Russians lack artillery and tanks shells. According to Budanov, the Russian army faces almost the same problems that the Ukrainian Army used to face.
"Only we had it in March, and they have had it since the early fall. Just as we had a problem with artillery shells, which we solved thanks to our partners, now they started having it. Just as we had problems with high-explosive fragmentation shells for tanks, so do they. The same applies to missiles to MLRS," Budanov said.
The head of the Intelligence Directorate noted that now the Russians, like Ukraine, are looking all over the world for 122- and 152-mm shells, high-explosive tank fragmentation cartridges and rockets for Grads and Uragan MLRS.
Budanov also assured that Russia has missiles only for two massive strikes on Ukraine. The Russians are reducing the number of attacks to keep simulating the intensity of these missile strikes.
According to intelligence reports, Russian industry needs 1.5-2 months to produce enough missiles for one attack on Ukraine.
The information was confirmed by Budanov's colleagues. After the New Year's shelling, the representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Vadim Skibitsky, said that Russia can carry out only 2-3 more massive missile strikes. The reason is simple, they are running out of high-precision munition.
The representative of the Intelligence Directorate said that the sanctions significantly reduced Russia’s missile production capacity, but it did not stop completely.