As of: February 5, 2024, 7:04 p.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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Press
Split
Ukraine is running out of shells, which is leading Russia to get cocky.
Observers believe that the causes of the disaster can also be found in Germany.
Lyssytschansk - Marco Seliger sees the root of the evil in Troisdorf, a town with less than 100,000 inhabitants, located on the southern periphery of the Rhine metropolis of Cologne.
50 city councilors from nine parties in the council are concerned about the well-being of their homeland;
The strongest faction is the CDU.
In the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
, Seliger writes that they only tripped up Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) at the end of last year.
In Seliger's opinion, the Troisdorf city councilors are helping Ukraine starve to death in the fight against imperialist Vladimir Putin's Russia.
The defenders are estimated to have a daily requirement of more than 5,000 grenades;
with no hope of being able to cover it.
Forbes
is currently reporting
that the Russians in the Ukraine war are concentrating their fire on their opponents' exposed positions, knowing that Ukraine is on the verge of having completely used up its powder and that they need not expect any response.
Explosives and other preliminary products for the production of ammunition have been manufactured in Troisdorf for more than 100 years.
For example, the company Dynitec with several production facilities is based in an industrial area. Dynitec belongs to the German defense company Diehl Defense from Überlingen on Lake Constance.
The defense company Diehl Defense is currently best known for its Iris air defense system.
But Diehl also produces ammunition on a large scale, including anti-aircraft and guided missiles, artillery and grenade ammunition, rockets and 40mm ammunition.
According to NZZ
research, Dynitec wanted to expand its factory in Troisdorf in order to
increase production - the goal, according to the company, was to triple the production volume.
To this end, Diehl intended to only purchase rented space in the commercial area.
But the city of Troisdorf thwarted Diehl's plans - the city council decided, with the votes of the Christian Democrats and the Greens, to issue a right of first refusal for the areas Diehl needed, thus slowing down the company's expansion.
Empty promises to Ukraine instead of help against Russia's artillery
The majority in the city council wanted to use the preemption statute to prevent Dynitec from expanding explosives production to such an extent that additional, huge distance areas would be necessary, the city administration told the
NZZ
.
Such areas are necessary for the production of explosives and weapons in order not to endanger the surrounding residential areas in the event of explosions on the company premises.
In the long term, an expansion of the production site would lead to large brownfield areas that would no longer be available for other uses such as business development or residential construction, the city explains to the newspaper.
In short supply: A Ukrainian soldier gets ammunition for a mortar.
The scarce stocks lead Russia to launch massive artillery strikes.
© IMAGO / ABACAPRESS
Forbes
author David Ax is currently talking about betrayal towards Ukraine.
“While Ukraine's artillery was on par with, if not superior to, Russian artillery just last summer, the Russians have now gained a five-fold advantage.
Ukrainian batteries fire around 2,000 grenades a day, Russian batteries 10,000.” He cites as an example of Russian activity the shelling of a position for almost 20 guns or self-propelled guns outside Lysychansk, around ten kilometers from the front in the eastern Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast – Russia may be taking breath for its own offensive.
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Promise to Ukraine: Large-scale deliveries only next year
The marching orders given in November by Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to mobilize Ukraine have long since become a Waterloo for German willingness to perform.
The additional German aid package worth 1.3 billion euros includes, among other things, four additional Iris T-SLM air defense systems as well as anti-tank mines and artillery shells of the NATO caliber 155 millimeters.
This is the third tranche of Iris-T systems that Germany has delivered to Ukraine since the major Russian attack began in February 2022.
Three systems have already been shipped, the second tranche is scheduled to follow in 2024;
the now promised third tranche another year later.
“We are talking about 20,000 additional grenades,” Pistorius told
Handelsblatt
about the size of the entire package of artillery ammunition.
According to him, 140,000 NATO caliber grenades had already been announced for last year.
Pistorius only promised extensive deliveries for 2025.
Types of military ammunition
Rifle and pistol ammunition
: Types of ammunition used in rifles and pistols.
They can be of various calibers and bullet types, including full metal jacket bullets, hollow point bullets and partial metal jacket bullets.
Artillery and grenade ammunition
: Types of ammunition for firing in artillery weapons such as howitzers, mortars and anti-tank guns.
They can include different types of grenades, such as high-explosive grenades, anti-tank grenades and smoke grenades.
Missiles
: Guided missiles that can hit a target with high precision.
There are different types of missiles, such as anti-aircraft missiles, guided missiles and anti-ship missiles.
Guided Missile
: Precision-guided munitions that travel at high speeds and can hit a target with high accuracy.
There are different types of guided missiles, such as air-to-surface missiles, air-to-air missiles and anti-ship missiles.
Anti-aircraft ammunition
: Projectiles used to defend against air attacks;
they include anti-aircraft ammunition and anti-aircraft missiles.
Anti-tank ammunition
: Projectiles used to combat armored targets;
they include various types of anti-tank grenades and anti-tank missiles.
Source:
Production Magazine – Technology and Economics for German Industry
The military analysts at the Ukrainian think tank
Frontelligence Insight
want to be able to prove that the Russian artillerymen are now trying to finally reduce their targets to rubble.
At the turn of the year, as Ukraine struggled with a shortage of artillery ammunition,
Frontelligence Insight
observed a trend: Russian forces became complacent and kept their artillery stationed in static positions for extended periods of time - sometimes for months.
This insouciance was due to Ukraine's inability to respond effectively to Russian artillery.
The situation continued until Ukraine targeted these artillery positions, predominantly with Himars and artillery as well as FPV (First Person View) drones.
The supply of artillery ammunition from South Korea, at the instigation of the United States, played an important role and allowed the Ukrainians to neutralize hundreds of Russian artillery pieces over time.
Now the Russians appear to be back to their old form, as
Frontelligence Insight
claims to have determined based on satellite images of the 1,000-kilometer front.
The analysts do not see this as a harbinger of Ukrainian war weariness; the defenders simply lack the explosive devices.
Annoyance in Saxony: No powder factory north of Dresden
The German company Rheinmetall would also like to supply - for example, cartridges caliber 35x228 millimeters for the German anti-aircraft gun tank Gepard.
The company produces, among other things, artillery and grenade ammunition, air defense missiles, guided missiles and training ammunition.
The cheetah fires a total of 1,100 rounds from its two Oerlikon machine cannons.
Per minute.
For Ukraine, the cheetah is considered Ukraine's effective weapon in the war against Vladimir Putin's invading army.
Still.
It remains to be seen when Rheinmetall will be able to expand its production to meet acute needs.
At the beginning of 2023, Rheinmetall is said to have considered expanding its two locations in Hungary and Bavaria to include a powder factory in Saxony.
According to the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung,
a commercial area should be built on a former military airfield in the city of Grossenhain north of Dresden (Meissen district).
Result: The Left Party called for a signature campaign against the powder factory.
16 of 22 city councilors spoke out against the powder factory in an open letter to Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU).
Rheinmetall then moved to Hungary.
Supplying the troops: Germany receives ammunition for four weeks of intense combat
The fact that there is war in Europe is still beyond the understanding of many Germans and some German politicians - at least that's what Germany's military historian Sönke Neitzel criticizes;
and the possibility that Russia could win this war still leads to surprise, which prompted the
taz
to ask him: Politicians do not want or cannot act with foresight, so they want and must be surprised when what they expect happens didn't prepare us?
Neitzel: “Yes, exactly.
Politics wants to assume clarity.
Politics wants to say: What we did is the only thing we could do.
Surprise takes on a kind of protective function here.
If I'm surprised, if I can't predict things at all, then I'm not to blame."
Politics wants to assume clarity.
Politics wants to say: What we did is the only thing we could do.
Military historian Sönke Neitzel told the taz.
The lack of ammunition was foreseeable because the troops had long complained about it.
The surprise of Russia's invasion protects those who have at least neglected to take precautions, says historian Neitzel: “Olaf Scholz didn't come up with the 100 billion euro investment announcement in the Bundeswehr within three days.
That was the sum that Bundeswehr planners had had in the drawer for years to get the armed forces back into operational condition.
What Scholz then tried to do was argue that that was the only step the government could take at that point.”
The Bundeswehr itself is struggling;
As the
Bundeswehr Journal
reports, Germany currently only has enough ammunition to be able to defend itself for two days.
The German Bundeswehr Association has already warned several times about a serious shortage of “ammunition worth 20 to 30 million euros,” as the soldiers' advocacy group writes.
In December, as part of Pistorius' announcement of the grenade delivery, Colonel iG Arne Collatz, head of the "Press" department at the Federal Ministry of Defense, said: by 2031, the Bundeswehr should be equipped with a 30-day supply of ammunition, as he literally said, " high-intensity combat.”
The background to the numbers is the NATO specifications.