“Back then, we could keep them on their toes, fire all the time. Nowwe fire exclusively for defence
Close to the frontline in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a bumpy road passes through half-abandoned hamlets. It morphs into a muddy track, snakes through fields, and eventually leads to an army base.
There, as a kettle boiled on a gas heater, a weary 39-year-old soldier, who wished to be known only by his callsign, Titushko, spoke about the problems of fighting the Russians amid a serious ammunition shortage, as the sound of fire from nearby positions echoed around the base.
In November, Titushko’s men, part of an artillery division in Ukraine’s First Tank Brigade, received a supply of about 300 shells every 10 days, but they now have a firing limit of just 10 a day. “Back then, we could keep them on their toes, fire all the time, aim every time we saw a target. Now we fire exclusively for defence,” he said.
The ammunition reserves at the base are thin, and partly made up of Iranian shells – part of a shipment seized in the Gulf apparently en route to Houthi rebels in Yemen. They are “extremely problematic and don’t work well”, another
