Ukraine War: Russian Artillery Challenges Western Narrative

Ukraine War: Why Each Side Believes It Is Winning

Is Russia losing the war in Ukraine? This question arose when Russian columns were stuck in the north and Mariupol still stood, leading to two incompatible narratives coexisting without either gaining dominance. One describes a methodical advance protecting civilians while accepting inevitable casualties. The other certifies that declared objectives were abandoned along the way. Between them lies a mountain of figures rarely compared.

The Three Figures Supporting the Advance Thesis

Those viewing Moscow as advancing rely on a specific estimate: about 3,000 dead and 12,000 wounded, including Donbas militias. To gauge if this is high, comparisons are drawn. In the Falklands, Britain deployed fewer than 5,000 actual combat troops and suffered nearly 100 deaths in three weeks. In 2006, Israel accumulated over 1,300 casualties and lost 50 Merkava tanks—22 completely destroyed—against fewer than 2,000 militiamen.

The second pillar is propaganda. It argues that four armored vehicles and seven charred bodies say nothing about a 2,000-kilometer front, noting that Ukraine highlights every success while silencing failures. In this reading, the irony of "everything is part of the plan" is returned to sender.

And the corollary is uncomfortable: the key question isn't how much Russia has lost, but how much capacity Ukraine retains to inflict casualties.

Why Is the Ukraine War Moving Slower Than Others?

Because air power isn't the protagonist. In conflicts over the last 40 years, the US or its allies devastated from the air before ground entry; jihadist propaganda summarized this by comparing the 50 cents of a bullet with the 500,000 euros of a missile, which held arithmetic truth.

Here, infantry and artillery fire carry the weight. Russian aviation serves another function: striking rear areas, destroying heavy equipment, and denying initiative to the adversary. Yugoslavia marks the limit of expectations: there NATO barely destroyed 10% of Serbian equipment in Kosovo, hidden and without ground forces to dislodge it.

With this context, the summary is that Ukrainian heavy arsenals are destroyed or captured, and artillery—the decisive weapon—has only just begun to speak.

The Three Unfulfilled Russian Objectives

The early list had three points: regime change in Kiev, annexation of Donbas with Crimea recognized as Russian territory, and formation of Novorossiya covering the entire coast and eastern Dnieper bank, leaving Ukraine with half its country.

None were resolved. The failure of the Kiev offensive weighs heavily on the other side, not just militarily: it reveals Russian intelligence assumed Ukrainians wouldn't fight. From there, the most repeated forecast is that the real war begins in the east and the outcome will be decided in weeks—a deadline that, like all in this conflict, has stretched.

From the 65-Kilometer Convoy to Nearly a Thousand T-72s

How much material can each side sustain? The figures are disorienting. On one hand, the 65-kilometer queue of vehicles immortalized on northern roads is recalled. On the other, the arrival of nearly a thousand T-72 tanks in Ukraine and the trickle of Western armament.

Some argue Russia's only truly antiestéticarsome asset is its nuclear arsenal and that the 65-kilometer convoy would have been pulverized in under 12 hours in a direct NATO clash. The reasonable doubt raised later concerns loitering munitions: if they become a real threat, incentives grow to strike foreign bases via indirect means. The same analysis counters that an artillery battery well-directed by a drone or advanced observation team multiplies its effectiveness sixfold, and that one hundred or one thousand loitering munitions won't break Russians more than thousands of artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions.

Gas as a Weapon and the Winter Bill

The energy front moved at the same pace. Gazprom stopped delivering Russian gas to Germany via the Yamal-Europe pipeline in early April, leaving the German government recalculating accounts. The view from the other side is purely accounting-based: $14 billion per month earned from gas sold to Europe, while some countries shut their own thermal and nuclear plants.

This exchange—the one who charges and the one who pays—supports much of the economic analysis. You don't need to win on the battlefield for cash flow to hold. And vice versa.

A Scoreboard Still in Dispute

What remains from this clash of positions is an unheroic realization: almost no one admitted to losing, and those reviewing these positions with distance have noted optimistic forecasts aged poorly. The war continues. So does the scoreboard. The only point where both sides agree is that the result cannot yet be read anywhere, despite each claiming to hold the official record.