Ukraine is creating several new brigades but it can’t arm all of them, military experts said.
In an interview with The Economist in May, Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavliuk, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said that Ukraine planned to create at least 10 new brigades to prepare for a Russian offensive.
“Ukraine is addressing its manpower challenges and is forming several new brigades, but delayed and insufficient Western weapons deliveries will likely prevent Ukraine from equipping all these new brigades,” the Institute for the Study of War said on Wednesday.
It added that “timely and appropriate Western security assistance continues to be a crucial determinant of when and at what scale Ukrainian forces can contest the battlefield initiative and conduct operationally significant counteroffensive operations in the future.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a similar assessment in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday.
He told the outlet that Ukrainian forces are in a better manpower position than they were a few months ago, but that they still lack the equipment they need.
“A problem can be solved if one has the will and has the tools. We do have the will, and the tools — they haven’t arrived yet,” he said.
The US sent $61 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine in April, after months of delays over Republican opposition.
But the equipment is taking too long to reach the front lines, Zelenskyy told Bloomberg.
“This is the biggest tragedy of this war, that between the decision and real fact, we have a real long, long, long wait,” he said.
The commander of Ukraine’s 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which operates near the crucial city of Chasiv Yar, made a similar point, saying Ukrainian units need more weapons to protect the city.
It’s not the first time Ukraine has faced delays in getting the weapons it needs to fight.
Last year, a report compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that only about half of the heavy weapons that Ukraine’s allies had promised to send it had actually been delivered.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Zelenskyy, said last year that Ukraine’s military efforts against Russia were six to nine months behind schedule because of delays in Western weapons deliveries in the fall of 2022.
And in May, Zelenskyy told Reuters that the West always gives weapons a year after Ukraine needs them.
An unnamed officer even told Politico in April that continued delays made Western weapons “no longer relevant” once they made it to the battlefield.
While some new ammunition is starting to make it to the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers in Vovchansk, in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, told The Telegraph last month that they are heavily outgunned.
“If we use 10 shells, they send 50 back,” one unnamed artillery gunner told the outlet.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine doesn’t have the time and flexibility to wait for Western supplies to equip its new units.
“The longer Ukraine must wait to equip and deploy new brigades, the more opportunities Russian forces will have to disrupt Ukrainian efforts to concentrate new uncommitted combat power for future counteroffensive operations,” it said.
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