“The army has fought amazingly under Zaluzhny but he has been poorly supported by the government and parliament,” said Glen Grant, a former British officer and a military expert with the Riga-based Baltic Security Foundation, pointing to tensions over a stalled mobilization law that Zaluzhny wants to boost troop numbers but which is politically dangerous.

Zaluzhny has also come under fire for not completing the Ukrainian military's transformation into a Western-style force, not improving logistics and failing to rotate troops away from the frontline to allow them to rest and recuperate rather than leaving them in trenches for the whole war, said Austrian military analyst Tom Cooper.

"After two years since the all-out invasion, none of these is working really well, and improvements observed so far remain relatively minimal," he said.

Grant did point to some management issues, although it’s not certain who bears the blame.

"Some of the weakest generals have been kept and better ones left idle. It is not clear whose fault this is," he said, but then added: "Zaluzhny is the best motivator. What he misses in skills and management knowledge he makes up for in character."

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The Pentagon pushed for the Ukrainian military to make a major thrust focused on one area where planners thought a breakthrough was possible. Instead, Kyiv chose several assaults across the front in the belief that would make it difficult for the Russians to reinforce many points at once.

After weeks of disagreements, “it became pretty clear over the course of the offensive that Ukrainians just weren't interested in U.S. advice, and they generally concluded that we have nothing to offer them advice-wise,” said one person who has advised the White House on military matters.

The argument, the adviser said, was that the United States didn’t have experience fighting the kind of war the Ukrainians were fighting, and while U.S. advice was welcomed, it could also be tone-deaf.

While blame for those disagreements fell squarely on Zaluzhny’s shoulders, he was also “hamstrung by Zelenskyy,” who had the final say on military matters, “and so the U.S. kept yelling at the wrong person,” the adviser said.

In the coming months, as Ukraine is now forced on the defensive, the current “war of attrition is a very, very bad choice for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian officer said.

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Europe’s arms production is in ‘deep ****,’ says Belgian ex-general

Europe’s ammo production shortfalls are a symptom of a “cultural problem” to adapt to a war-ready industry, retired general Marc Thys tells POLITICO.


It's going to take years for Europe to build up the arms and ammunition production capacity needed to both aid Ukraine and reequip national forces, Belgium's former deputy chief of defense said.

“It’s not a joke, we’re in deep ****," Marc Thys, who retired in 2023 with the rank of lieutenant general, told POLITICO. "Especially in Belgium, but we’re not the only ones.”

With Ukraine running into severe shell shortages as Russians push into key cities like Avdiivka, and growing concern over the reliability of Europe's traditional alliance with the United States, the worry is that time is running out to ramp up arms production on the Continent.

Thys said top commanders warned at the outset of Russia’s war on Ukraine in early 2022 that it would take “five to seven years” to tool up the bloc's industry to reach the kind of industrial capacity necessary to sustain a credible deterrence.

“Ammunition is a symptom of a cultural problem within Europe,” said Thys, pointing to reliance on the U.S. security umbrella as an excuse for decades of underinvestment in the bloc's own production capacity.

While the EU will fail to send a million rounds of artillery ammunition to Ukraine by the end of March, as it had promised, it now claims it's on track to deliver 1.1 million shells by the end of the year.

Defense investment is moving rapidly up the political agenda, both in national capitals and in Brussels.

On Feb. 27, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton is due to set out a fresh strategy aimed at securing sustained investment for defense.

The kind of money needed is eye-watering.

Thys has previously said that it would require investment in the order of €5 billion to €7 billion in Belgium alone to make enough shells to fight a two-month conflict.

European Council President Charles Michel said Wednesday at the European Investment Bank Group Forum: “We could invest at least €600 billion in defense over the next 10 years.”

The EU already offers limited subsidies to boost joint procurement and help build out production lines, but Thys says such initiatives take time to deliver even modest returns.

“You’re talking from an industrial point of view of building a supply chain of two to three years,” he said, adding that Russia was proving faster at ramping up its production of shells and weapons.

While European arms-maker KNDS plans to open a new production line for 155 millimeter artillery ammunition in Belgium, it will take two years just to install and set up machinery to build the round casings, let alone begin production



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• CNN
•  
  • Feb 8, 2024 Updated 13 mins ago
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Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the dismissal of Ukraine’s top commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in the biggest military shakeup since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost two years ago.

UK military's readiness for 'all-out war' in doubt, say MPs - as HMS Queen Elizabeth set to miss NATO drills

A new report by the Defence Committee comes amid intensifying debate about whether we are on the cusp of another world war - and whether Britain would be ready to fight.


Josephine FranksNews reporter @jos_franks


The UK armed forces are losing personnel faster than they can recruit, leaving their "warfighting readiness" in doubt, according to a new report by the Defence Committee.

The report also found the military has "key capability and stockpile shortages" that would hamper its ability to engage in "all-out, prolonged war".

It comes as the Royal Navy announced that its most powerful warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, would not be sailing from Portsmouth on Sunday as planned to head more than 40 vessels taking part in the largest NATO exercise in Europe since the Cold War because of a mechanical issue.

The fleet commander said: "Routine pre-sailing checks yesterday identified an issue with a coupling on HMS Queen Elizabeth's starboard propeller shaft.

"As such, the ship will not sail on Sunday. HMS Prince of Wales will take the place of HMS Queen Elizabeth on NATO duties and will set sail for Exercise Steadfast Defender as soon as possible."

The Steadfast Defender drills will take place off Norway's Arctic coast in March

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has publicly conceded just five people are recruited to the armed forces for every eight who leave - but the committee said it understood the situation may now be even worse.

The military is "consistently overstretched", it said, which has a personal cost for staff and impacts retention.

"A steady, continuous drip of operations and ongoing commitments has meant the military is unable to devote sufficient training and resources to high-intensity warfighting," chair of the committee, Sir Jeremy Quin, said.

"While able to deploy at short notice and to fulfil commitments, our inquiry found that readiness for all-out, prolonged war has received insufficient attention and needs intense ongoing focus."

Readiness is defined as how long it takes to go from an initial order to a unit being ready to perform its task, and is considered an important part of deterrence.

Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London, told the inquiry that if the UK had to fight a "come-as-you-are war", the armed forces would "have difficulty" given their current levels of equipment and stockpiles.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he and U.S. President Joe Biden agree that Ukraine would not be able to defend itself from Russia without American aid.

The two leaders met in Washington on Friday as the Biden administration and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives remained at loggerheads over the president's $95.3 billion military aid package, $60 billion of which is allocated for Ukraine's war with Russia.

"Let's not beat around the bush: Support from the United States is indispensable for the question of whether Ukraine will be able to defend its own country," Scholz said after the meeting.