The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Ukraine Targets Russia’s Most Important Weapon: Artillery || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

*This video was recorded last week, prior to Peter departing on his backpacking trip. There are reports coming out of Ukraine indicating that there has been a sharp uptick in Russian artillery losses. This data isn't confirmed, but it could be a good sign for Ukraine. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/ukraine-targets-russias-most-important-weapon-artillery

Hey everybody, Peter Zane here coming to you from Denver International Airport where I'm about to catch a flight to California so I can go hiking in Newsemit, which means you're not going to get any good updates for me on the Ukraine war over the next roughly month because I will be out of touch. So let me give you an idea of what I'll be looking for when I get back, because there is another new wrinkle in the conflict that, oh, anyway, the Ukrainian government over the last roughly five, maybe even six weeks down, has been reporting a tripling

in terms of the tolls inflicted upon Russian artillery. Now, Russian artillery is really where it's at. The Russian military is an artillery force, not an infantry force, not an army force. And probably 80% of the casualties that the Ukrainian military suffered has been because of artillery.

When the Russians go into a town, they don't go to a door by door to clear it. They just use artillery to pound everything into rubble and then take control of the ruins. So if there has been a significant uptip, it matters. Now, that tripling can't confirm that it's true. It's probably part propaganda, probably part optimism.

But independent recordings of artillery have also indicated a very, very sharp uptick. The problem with those reports is they tend to be somewhat dated. Anyway, there are a couple things that have going on that do suggest that the Ukrainians have having a lot more success. The first one is kind of technical, and that is we have a lot of North Korean shells that are entering the field now, and these things can't use modern artillery systems. North Korea is many things, but a technologically leader, it is not. And so most of the artillery pieces that the Russians have that can use the North Korean artillery shells date back to the 1950s.

They have much shorter range. Since Ukrainian loitering missions, until now, have only had about a range of 12 miles. That means until now, there haven't been a lot of Russian artillery pieces within range, but with the North Korean stuff in place, some of them are. Second and far more importantly, the Ukrainians have really built up an industry from scratch for robotics and drones. And there are now not just dozens, but high hundreds, maybe even low thousands, basically garage shops are in this country.

Anyway, these garage shops are making more and more advanced and most importantly longer ranged drones now that have ranges in the 20 to 35 mile range. And that puts the majority of Russian artillery potentially within range. So it's a question really of how fast the Ukrainians can spin all this up. It's not all the Ukrainians, of course. Most of the Western allies have now allowed the Ukraine to do at least limited strikes within Russian territory with the weapons they brought in. So things like the American APCAMs are having a much bigger impact.

But ultimately the numbers of those things are relatively limited and so they're reserved for relatively large concentrations as opposed to a single artillery piece. But if you can produce thousands of drones and throw a dozen in each target, you're talking about a significant change in the picture of the front line. So by the time I get back a month from now, we should have a really good idea if this is working or not. The Russians started the war with about 2,000 artillery pieces in operation, and their regular units and another 19,000 in reserves at various stages of disrepair. If you can have a bird rate of that that's triple,

The Russians simply can't keep up with that in terms of new manufacturers or refurbishment. So obviously it would be, I don't want to use a game change. There's so many things in play here. But it's definitely the most significant thing that's happening this summer.