May 14, 2025:
When the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, they expected a quick victory. When that did not happen and the war dragged on into 2023 the troops discovered why quick victory was so important. Russia did not have enough artillery ammunition for a long war and the gun barrels could not be supplied with new barrels to replace the worn out ones due to Western sanctions.
Unlike Ukraine, which had substantial military and economic support from NATO nations, all Russia had were Iran and North Korea. These two nations had long been under economic sanctions for misbehavior. This made them ideal allies for wartime Russia. Iran provided missiles and drones while North Korea supplied artillery and lots of 152mm and 122mm shells to feed the guns. The North Koreas took advantage of Russian desperation and sold them older munitions. Some of those shells were past their use-by date and unreliable. The Russians were desperate and didn’t bother to check for this. That was a costly mistake because their artillerymen found that many of the shells did not work and some exploded when fired. This destroyed the gun and sometimes killed or injured some of the artillerymen.
It got worse when the Ukrainians began using drones for surveillance and attacks on any targets within ten, and then twenty, kilometers of the front line. Twenty kilometers was critical. This meant the Russian towed guns could not get close enough to the front to be effective. Kept twenty kilometers behind the troops, the 122mm artillery was useless because it only had a range of about fifteen kilometers. The 152mm could hit targets 25 kilometers but when moved closer than 20 kilometers from the front, the guns were subject to drone attacks. Eventually new drones with a range of 40 kilometers appeared and Russian artillery became target practice for the Ukrainian drones.
By then North Korea was providing newly manufactured shells for Russian guns that could not get close enough to the front to be useful. North Korea also provided ballistic missiles and troops, so the Russians took the good with the bad and soldiered on.