In Urgent Need of Ammunition, Ukraine Speeds Its Own Production (2024)

Ukraine looks to boost ammunition production.

Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries, Alexander Kamyshin, declined, on security grounds, to otherwise quantify or provide details of the ammunition manufactured in July. In a telephone interview on Wednesday, he described the amount only as “an important input to the counteroffensive.”

“I am sure the defense industry will become the backbone of security during the wartime,” he said, predicting that “we will be the locomotive for economic revival after the war is over.”

“But I don’t focus much on that now,” he said. “For me, it’s important to bring more armaments to my army to force Russians out.”

It is not clear how much ammunition Ukraine produced before the war began. For competitive reasons, weapons manufacturers generally do not disclose how many systems or how much ammunition they produce in any given year.

Ukraine has long been in danger of running out of ammunition in the war, as each side continually pounds the other with mortars, rockets and other artillery. Recent estimates suggest that Ukraine was burning through as much as 8,000 rounds of ammunition each day in the counteroffensive that began in early June. One military analyst who recently visited the front lines, Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment, said on Wednesday that the estimate was “plausible.”

When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, its defense industry was one of the country’s largest employers, but shrank over the past 30 years in the absence of robust military budgets. As recently as 2021, the Ukrainian weapons producer Luch Design Bureau could deliver no more than 800 missiles out of an order for 2,000 to the Defense Ministry, according to the Foreign Policy Research Group.

Mr. Kamyshin said there were “hundreds” of weapons manufacturing facilities in Ukraine, most of which were now focused on producing ammunition and drones. Building armored vehicles, like personnel carriers, is also underway, and Ukraine’s industry has recently begun to produce munitions for drones, he said.

Most of the newly made Ukrainian ammunition is Soviet-era caliber, Mr. Kamyshin said, meaning it will fit many of the cannons and rocket launchers that Ukraine’s military has long used, but not the billions of dollars in Western weapons systems that NATO states have sent since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Last month, the Biden administration decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to make up for shortages of 155-millimeter rounds as troops inch forward to reclaim Russian-held territory in Ukraine’s south and southeast. Cluster munitions are widely banned around the world because they can cause indiscriminate harm to civilians, especially children, who may set off unexploded rounds long after the fighting has ended.

Without the cluster munitions, Mr. Kofman said, “the offensive would culminate early” — whenever Ukraine runs out of ammunition.

Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.

Russian drones strike a Danube River port, damaging Ukrainian grain awaiting export, officials say.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that a grain elevator had been damaged in Izmail, a city across the Danube from Romania, a NATO member. Several videos posted on social media showed a predawn blaze several stories high with billowing smoke. Some of the posts said that the strike and ensuing fire were clearly visible from a Romanian town on the other side of the river.

In the regional capital of Odesa, a major Black Sea port, a fire broke out at the port after a drone strike, and a grain silo was damaged, Mr. Kiper said.

Last week, Russia for the first time hit a port on the Danube when it attacked the town of Reni, across the river from Romania and upstream from Izmail, destroying a grain hangar. That strike was Russia’s closest brush with hitting the territory of a NATO member since beginning its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

For Ukraine, the smaller ports on the Danube, the largest river in the European Union by length and volume, became the only shipping portals for millions of tons of grain after Russia declined last month to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had for a year guaranteed safe passage for Ukrainian food exports.

Russia has attacked Ukraine’s ports and grain export facilities since pulling out of the deal and said that it would consider ships sailing to any of those ports a military threat.

Gennadiy Ivanov, the director of BPG Shipping, a Ukrainian shipping company that manages grain-carrying vessels, said on Wednesday that there was a backlog of about 100 vessels in Ukraine’s Danube River ports, and that congestion would likely worsen if more infrastructure were attacked. Insurance premiums for vessels operating at those ports are expected to rise, and the costs will be borne by already struggling Ukrainian farmers, he said.

“By trying to destroy infrastructure in the Danube, Russia wants to get Ukraine out of the game completely,” Mr. Ivanov said, adding, “If Russia continues to destroy the infrastructure, the question is how many terminals can accept vessels.”

Jenny Gross contributed reporting.

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A legal team finds a pattern of torture at detention centers in Kherson during Russia’s occupation.

Working with Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General, the Mobile Justice Team analyzed reports on 320 cases of detention across more than 35 detention centers in Kherson. Of those 320 people, at least 43 percent — or more than 137 — described practices of torture by Russian guards, often citing sexual violence as a common tactic.

The effort was meant to help identify patterns in different cases and help “systemize the evidence,” said Anna Mykytenko, a senior legal adviser at Global Rights Compliance.

Patterns in the evidence suggested that victims and witnesses were detained for showing support for Ukraine, she said. Ms. Mykytenko said that the team also assessed the evidence for possible genocide, a complex crime that requires further investigation.

In dozens of cases, people said they had been subjected during interrogation to electrical shocks, often to the genitals, the investigation found. Near suffocation, waterboarding, severe beatings and threats of rape were other techniques cited as having been used by Russian guards. At least one person reported being forced to witness another detainee being raped with a foreign object covered in a condom.

The kind of sexual violence described by the detainees is often underreported, said Gissou Nia, a human rights lawyer who has worked on war crimes and crimes against humanity trials at the International Criminal Tribunal.

“There’s a lot of stigma around reporting sexual violence,” she said. “So I think what’s significant about this is that it looks like they have a sizable number of survivors who have been willing to come forward and provide evidence.”

Those held in the Kherson detention centers included current or former members of the military and law enforcement, as well as activists, community leaders, medical workers and teachers.

The researchers identified one Russian soldier, Oleksandr Naumenko, as having ordered the genital electrocution of 17 of the detainees. Identifying individual Russian perpetrators is “well underway,” according to a news release from Global Rights Compliance.

Brazil still wants to broker peace, but admits it seems far off.

He said he has made his chief foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, his “special war envoy” and dispatched him to meetings with Mr. Putin in Moscow and Mr. Zelensky in Kyiv.

And he has blocked Brazil from selling any weapons that could end up being used in the war.

But none of those efforts have yielded much progress, he said.

Still, Brazil is not giving up. Mr. Amorim, who will appear remotely at a meeting on Ukraine’s peace plan scheduled on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, said in an interview on Wednesday that his strategy is to respect both Ukraine and Russia, even if one invaded the other.

“Territorial integrity of states must be respected,’’ he said. “Security concerns, including Russia’s, also must be respected by everyone.”

Mr. Amorim said he believed that Brazil has more influence with Russia than it does with Ukraine, in part because of its place in a bloc known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

China, he said, has already helped tamp down Moscow’s rhetoric about nuclear weapons. He said that the United States could also play a key role in persuading Ukraine to seek peace.

Brazil’s stance that Russia’s concerns must be heard has frustrated Ukraine and its Western allies. When a planned meeting between Mr. Lula and Mr. Zelensky on the sidelines of the Group of 7 Summit in Japan in May failed to happen, the leaders blamed each other.

Mr. Lula has said that both Russia and Ukraine caused the war. And Mr. Zelensky has criticized Mr. Lula’s call for peace talks, saying the Brazil leader just wants to be “original.”

But Mr. Zelensky seemed to encourage improving relations recently when he suggested that Brazil host a summit for Latin American nations that Ukraine could attend.

Mr. Amorim, Brazil’s chief foreign policy adviser, said Brazil would welcome Mr. Zelensky for a visit — but would not host meetings for him.

“Brazil does not have to be a stage for anyone, not for Zelensky, not for Putin,” he said. “We want peace, we want the Ukrainian people to live in peace, to end the war in which they are the main victims. But for that, we also have to have credibility with the other side.”

Paulo Motoryn contributed reporting.

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Battlefield Update: Ukraine says it has reclaimed ground south of Bakhmut amid heavy fighting.

In recent weeks, Ukraine was set on retaking Klishchiivka, but Russian forces reinforced their positions with troops and artillery, halting the Ukrainian advance and forcing Kyiv’s forces to pay dearly for each yard they recaptured. Both sides have repeatedly attacked and counterattacked around Andriivka, making it difficult to discern exactly how much terrain has changed hands.

WHY IT MATTERS: Ukraine launched a counteroffensive last month, attacking Russian positions in two sectors in the south of the country and around Bakhmut in the east. It appears that Ukraine may have made greater progress around Bakhmut, where some military experts have said that Russia had less time to prepare defensive positions relative to the months it has had in the south.

Despite the scale of the losses Russia took to secure Bakhmut, the city holds limited strategic value — it sits on low ground and is vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery. In addition, Ukrainian forces have dug defenses west of the city, making any further Russian advance difficult.

Moscow has in recent weeks also attempted to advance west from towns it holds farther north. Military experts say that part of the purpose of this push could be to pressure Ukraine to redeploy its forces away from the fighting around Bakhmut.

An administrative building is damaged in a drone attack on Kyiv.

Russian drones also targeted the Black Sea port of Odesa and the surrounding region, including the Danube River port of Izmail, damaging infrastructure Ukraine uses to ship grain.

Ukrainian air defenses have for the most part thwarted a Russian campaign in recent weeks to attack the capital using drones and missiles. Even so, loud explosions caused by air defense systems, some supplied by the United States and Ukraine’s other allies, have at times rattled residents and forced some to sleep in shelters.

Also on Wednesday, the authorities in the northeastern region of Kharkiv said that a 91-year-old woman was killed and a man was seriously wounded in Russian shelling a day earlier in the village of Pershotravneve.

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Putin speaks with Erdogan, who urges a resumption of the Black Sea grain deal.

In its own statement about the call, the Kremlin repeated its position that it would be willing to rejoin the agreement only if its conditions were met, signaling that its stance has not changed since it terminated the deal.

Russia’s decision has halted Ukrainian exports that were permitted under the deal, and caused global wheat prices to rise briefly. Because Ukraine is a major producer of grain and other foodstuffs, the agreement had helped keep global food prices stable and alleviate one part of the fallout from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 17 months ago.

Russia’s Navy holds sway over the Black Sea, through which the bulk of Ukraine’s grain exports travel, giving it considerable leverage in any talks over a resumption of the deal. Moscow has also warned that it would consider any ship approaching one of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to be potentially carrying military cargo.

Moscow says that sanctions imposed by the United States and Ukraine’s European allies restrict its ability to sell its agricultural products. Its demands for a resumption of the deal include allowing its agricultural bank access to the international SWIFT banking system, which would facilitate its own grain and other exports.

The Kremlin statement said there had been a “complete lack of progress” in meeting its conditions. It reiterated the government’s willingness to supply grain for free to some countries in Africa where a hunger crisis has been exacerbated by Russia’s decision.

Mr. Erdogan, unusually for the leader of a NATO member, has maintained close ties to Mr. Putin since Russia’s invasion, and some analysts say that a visit to Turkey by the Russian leader could be key to a resumption of the deal. The Turkish statement said that Mr. Putin would visit Mr. Erdogan, without specifying a time frame, although the Kremlin statement spoke only of preparations for a “possible meeting” between the leaders.

Danube River ports have become crucial for Ukrainian exports.

“The Danube is our gateway at sea to Europe and the world,” Stanislav Zinchenko, chief executive of GMK, a Kyiv-based economic think tank, said in an interview.

Before the war, the Danube ports were barely utilized. In recent months, they have accounted for roughly one-third of agricultural exports, including grain, according to industry analysts. Most of the shipping goes downriver to the sea; a much smaller amount moves upriver to other parts of Europe.

Russia has made clear that any vessel entering the Black Sea is at risk, seemingly creating a de facto blockade and threatening the fate of the Danube ports. On a near daily basis Russian missiles and drones have battered Ukrainian ports, including one on the Danube only a few hundred feet from Romania. The Kremlin has warned that “all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports” will be “regarded as potential carriers of military cargo.”

To avoid running afoul of the Russian warning, international ships headed toward Ukraine largely came to a halt. More than a dozen vessels dropped anchor, huddling close to the coast.

Slowly and cautiously, shipping has started to return in recent days. This weekend, one vessel, Ams1, crossed into the Black Sea and set course for the small port Ukrainian port of Izmail on the Danube. At least two more vessels have followed.

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In Moscow, some residents worry after recent attacks while others move on.

With Ukraine signaling that strikes inside Russia have become part of its strategy, and residents of some of the most expensive areas of Moscow grasping the reality that the war will not leave them untouched, some Russians resorted to a common tactic: trying to push the bad news out of their minds to go on with their daily lives.

“People are consciously or unconsciously ignoring it,” wrote Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political analyst. “They want to shut themselves from it because they want to preserve their lives to be as normal as possible.”

Their efforts have been aided by Russian state television, which dismissed the incidents as minor and emphasized in their reports that the drones, suppressed by means of electronic warfare, caused little damage.

Mirlan Yzakov, who owns an investment company with an office in a Moscow tower, said that he learned about the attacks on the news and that it didn’t affect his work flow. His team continues to work from their offices, he said.

“This is the time of сonflict, a conflict of interests, so this is a natural procedure,” Mr. Yzakov said. “We live in a difficult time.”

Russian government officials seemed to be more serious about the threat.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, compared the attacks with 9/11, but Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said he doesn’t see any parallels. Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Peskov said that the recent drone attacks demonstrated that “there is a clear threat” and that “measures are being taken” to improve defenses of the capital.

The country’s bloggers tried to portray the attacks as an act of desperation by Ukraine, aimed at diverting media attention at a time when the Ukrainian counteroffensive has been slowly progressing.

“There is zero military damage,” Andrei Perla, a political commentator for Tzargrad, an ultranationalist television channel, wrote on Sunday after the first attack, “But there is a psychological effect.”

At least 28 drones have attacked Moscow and the surrounding suburban region over the past three months, according to Verstka, a Russian news website. They have done little damage and have never led to severe injuries, but have hit a wide range of targets: from the Senate Palace in the Kremlin, the main office of President Vladimir V. Putin, to buildings just a stone’s throw away from the main military headquarters.

The towers that were hit on Tuesday and over the weekend have been billed as a symbol of an oil-fueled, booming Russian economy that was getting integrated into the global economy — a process that has been abruptly halted by the invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian digital development ministry, whose offices were hit by one of the drones, sent its staff to work from home, the agency’s representative told Interfax, a news agency, on Tuesday.

Maksim Khodyrev, a real estate agent who specializes in the Moscow area, said that after the second attack he began to receive letters from apartment tenants saying that they no longer felt safe and “are thinking about canceling lease agreements.”

“If this will be the end of it, in one month everyone will forget about these incidents and things will go back to normal,” Mr. Khodyrev said in written comments. “If attacks continue, then there will be no new sales at the current prices.”