Russia is producing artillery shells around three times faster than Ukraine’s Western allies and for about a quarter of the cost

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3 weeks ago

May 26, 2024

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Russia is producing artillery shells around three times faster than Ukraine’s Western allies and for about a quarter of the cost, according to an analysis shared with Sky News.

The figures, produced by the management consulting firm Bain & Company, underline a major challenge faced by the Ukrainian armed forces as they rely on supplies of ammunition from the United States and Europe to battle Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The war has been described from the start as a “battle of fires” because of the volume of artillery rounds used.

It prompted the US, the UK and other European allies to seek to ramp up production in their respective factories, but their ability to manufacture artillery rounds still lags behind Russia’s despite a combined economic strength that far outmatches Moscow’s.

As a result, Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline say for every one round they fire against Russian positions, the invading troops can launch around five shells back.

Battling against the odds, the Ukrainians say they have become skilled at trying to make every round count.

“Often, with just one, two or three shells, we can completely destroy a target,” said Senior Lieutenant Kostiantin, an artillery battery commander with the 57th Brigade, which is fighting against a new Russian invasion into the Kharkiv region, in the northeast of Ukraine.

But the commander said Ukrainian troops still need more supplies.

“We have to keep holding the Russians back… and make every metre of land they try to take cost them hundreds of lives.”

The research on artillery rounds by Bain & Company, which drew on publicly available information, found that Russian factories were forecast to manufacture or refurbish about 4.5 million artillery shells this year compared with a combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US.

On cost, it said the average production cost per 155 mm shell – the type produced by NATO countries – was about $4,000 (£3,160) per unit, though it varied significantly between countries. This is compared with a reported Russian production cost of around $1,000 (£790) per 152 mm shell that the Russian armed forces use.

Artillery is only one of many munition shortfalls faced by Ukraine.

Sky News visited a group of new recruits in the east of the country who were learning how to use an N-LAW anti-tank missile, first provided to the Ukrainian military by the UK.

They said a shortage of supplies means they just pretend to fire the weapon in training and would only use it for real when in battle – and only then there are any stocks.

“We have a lack of N-LAWs and we need more,” said a soldier with the callsign “Bolt”, who was giving the training to the new soldiers in a reconnaissance battalion of 5th Brigade.

Asked whether he had a message for the factory workers in the UK who assembled the weapon, Bolt said: “We’d like to thank our Western partners for their help. But, if possible, we would be very grateful if they could provide more NATO munitions.”

The importance of producing weapons and ammunition is why many experts say factory production lines – rather than the frontline – could be where the war in Ukraine is won.

Sky News visited a factory in Belfast in April where the N-LAW missile is assembled by Thales, a global defence company. The weapon is designed by the Swedish firm Saab.

The assembly takes place inside a large hall containing a mixture of machines grinding metal and desks where delicate work takes place on tiny but vital components.

Working hours on the production line at the time were only four days a week from 7am until 4pm, though they were believed to be increasing.

Thales manufactures its own weapons here as well, including Starstreak, a short-range, surface-to-air missile that can take out aircraft, and the Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM). Both of these systems are also used in Ukraine.

Philip McBride, the managing director of Thales Belfast, said N-LAW production capacity had doubled since the start of the year and there was scope to double it again.

Asked why the expansion only began then, when Russia’s full-scale war erupted in February 2022, he explained it was because of a number of factors.

Firstly, the UK Ministry of Defence supplies Ukraine with N-LAWs, rather than Thales directly. The missiles initially given to the Ukrainian military were those that the British armed forces already had in their own stockpiles.

“They’ve granted that and then they go through their own procurement process, agree what their actual requirement is in the UK… and once they’ve decided that, then they’ll place orders allowing us to ramp up,” Mr McBride said.

Another factor is that it can take up to two years to source the parts that are required for the N-LAW.

However, asked if production at the factory would have been expanded sooner had the Ministry of Defence put in orders earlier, the managing director said: “The earlier an order comes, the sooner we can ramp up production.”

A lot of work is going on at the plant to modernise the equipment and enable a further expansion of production lines.

The number of employees has also grown, with around 900 people now working at the site and at a second facility in Belfast, compared with just 500 a few years ago.

World

Palestinians gather at ruined mosque for Eid al Adha prayers – as Muslims celebrate around the world

Published

14 hours ago

June 16, 2024

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Palestinians gather at ruined mosque for Eid al Adha prayers - as Muslims celebrate around the world

Dozens of Palestinians have gathered near the ruins of a mosque destroyed by Israeli airstrikes to perform Eid al Adha prayers.

They were surrounded by the debris and rubble of collapsed houses at the former site of the al Rahma mosque in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza to mark the start of the major holiday.

Israel-Hamas war: Follow live updates

Commonly translated as the Feast of Sacrifice, Eid al Adha is the second of the two main Islamic holidays – alongside Eid al Fitr – when better-off Muslims commemorate Ibrahim’s test of faith by slaughtering livestock and animals and distributing some of the meat to the poor.

“Today, after the ninth month, more than 37,000 martyrs, more than 87,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed,” said Abdulhalim Abu Samra, a displaced Palestinian, after prayers in Khan Younis. “Our people live in difficult circumstances.”

In the nearby town of Deir al Balah in central Gaza, Muslims held their prayers in a school-turned-shelter, while some, including women and children, went to cemeteries to visit the graves of loved ones.

Palestinians also gathered at the al Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City, the site of the Dome of the Rock shrine.

It comes against a the backdrop of the devastating Israel-Hamas war which has pushed the Middle East to the brink of a regional conflict.

The Israeli military has announced a “tactical pause” in its offensive in southern Gaza to allow the deliveries of more humanitarian aid.

The suspension, which begins as Muslims started marking the major holiday, came after discussions with the United Nations and international aid agencies, the military said.

Most countries marked Eid al Adha on Sunday, while others, like Indonesia, will celebrate it on Monday.

Cities including Beirut, in Lebanon, Mosul in Iraq and Istanbul, in Turkey crowded with worshippers.

In Egypt, balloons were released after prayer at a public park, outside El-Seddik Mosque in Cairo.

Muslims in Russia offered prayers at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque and gathered in Moskovsky central avenue during celebrations in St Petersburg.

World

Significant support for Ukraine at peace summit – but key nations hesitate

Published

17 hours ago

June 16, 2024

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Significant support for Ukraine at peace summit - but key nations hesitate

Eighty countries called for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” to be the basis of any peace deal on Sunday – but a number of nations did not join in.

World leaders including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and France’s Emmanuel Macron were among around 100 delegations at a two-day conference in Switzerland this weekend.

The summit was aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow was not invited, and its main ally China declined to attend.

Vladimir Putin is not ruling out talks with Ukraine, according to his spokesperson, who said guarantees would be needed to ensure the credibility of any negotiations.

It comes as Kremlin forces in Ukraine claim to have taken control of a village in Zaporizhzhia.

A joint communique from 80 countries said the UN Charter and “respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty… can and will serve as a basis for achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine”.

“The ongoing war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine continues to cause large-scale human suffering and destruction, and to create risks and crises with global repercussions,” the declaration said.

Participants India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates were among those that did not sign up to the final document, which focused on issues of nuclear safety, food security and the exchange of prisoners.

Brazil, which has “observer” status, also did not sign. With China, Brazil has jointly sought to plot alternative routes toward peace.

Ursula von der Leyen, chief of the European Commission, said this weekend has brought peace closer to Ukraine, but that peace will not be achieved in one step.

“It was not a peace negotiation because Putin is not serious about ending the war, he’s insisting on capitulation, he’s insisting on ceding Ukrainian territory – even territory that today is not occupied,” she said.

Analysts say the two-day conference is likely to have little concrete impact towards ending the war because the country leading and continuing it, Russia, was not invited.

Montenegro Prime Minister Milojko Spajic told the gathering on Sunday: “As a father of three, I’m deeply concerned by thousands of Ukrainian kids forcibly transferred to Russia or Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine.”

“We all at this table need to do more so that children of Ukraine are back in Ukraine,” he added.

World

Iranian war criminal freed by Sweden in prisoner swap deal

Published

1 day ago

June 16, 2024

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Iranian war criminal freed by Sweden in prisoner swap deal

Sweden has released a convicted Iranian war criminal as part of a prisoner swap deal.

Tehran and Stockholm carried out the switch, which saw a European Union diplomat and another man released in exchange for Hamid Nouri, who was found guilty of being complicit in the 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic.

Nouri was arrested in 2019 as he travelled in Sweden as a tourist.

This likely prompted the detention of the two Swedes, part of a long-running strategy by Iran to use those with ties abroad as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West.

While Iranian state television claimed that Nouri had been “illegally detained”, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said diplomat Johan Floderus and a second Swedish citizen, Saeed Azizi, had been facing a “hell on earth”.

“Iran has made these Swedes pawns in a cynical negotiation game with the aim of getting the Iranian citizen Hamid Nouri released from Sweden,” Mr Kristersson said on Saturday.

“It has been clear all along that this operation would require difficult decisions – now the government has made those decisions.”

State TV showed film of Nouri limping off a plane at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran and embracing his family.

“I am Hamid Nouri. I am in Iran,” he said. “God makes me free.”

Oman mediated the release, its state-run news agency reported.

In 2022, the Stockholm District Court sentenced Nouri to life in prison.

It identified him as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison outside the Iranian city of Karaj.

The 1988 mass executions came at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq.

After Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a United Nations-brokered ceasefire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, backed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack.

Iran ultimately blunted their assault but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as “death commissions”.

International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed. Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Mr Khomeini’s orders, though some argue that other top officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death.

Late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month, was also involved in the mass executions.

Mr Floderus was arrested in April 2022 at Tehran airport while returning from a holiday with friends. He had been held for months before his family and others went public about his detention.

Mr Azizi’s case was not as prominent but in February the group Human Rights Activists in Iran reported that the dual Iranian-Swedish national had been sentenced to five years in prison by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security”.

The group said Mr Azizi has cancer.