Zhyrokhov, Mykhailo War in Ukraine. Volume 10: Ukrainian- & Western-Designed Artillery Systems, 2022-2024

A volume from the series Europe @ War. Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945. What began as a hybrid conflict with plausible deniability soon spread to the Donbass and eventually escalated into a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022. What has not changed since 2014 is the dominant role that artillery plays on the battlefield - in the armed forces of both sides. Since February 2022, the artillery systems developed in the former USSR have formed the backbone of the artillery forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU). As many of them were already worn out during the eight-year war in the Donbass and ammunition supplies were quickly depleted to repel the invasion of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF), Ukraine's Western allies began to supplement and in some cases replace the Soviet-designed artillery systems with towed and self-propelled guns of their own design from mid-2022. Although these systems are only available in relatively small numbers even three years later, they have not only proven to be of better quality than the old Soviet systems, but have also played a decisive role in the defence of Ukraine by enabling the ZSU to switch from Soviet mass fire to precise fire.