The Russians were expelled from Kherson with these western weapons US sanctions Swiss “Russia supporters” + Lavrov denies hospital report

It has been one of the great misconceptions since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that Western stockpiles are incapable of turning the tide on the battlefield. On the contrary: Western weapons made the decisive difference in Ukraine’s recapture of the southern provincial capital Kherson.

For weeks, the Ukrainian army has been forcing the Russians into an artillery-led war of attrition. She specifically targeted Russian positions that were also miles behind the front line: ammunition depots, army bases and supply posts. Russian supply lines to Kherson have come under increasing pressure, especially since the Ukrainians blew up the bridges over the Dnipro River.

With the river at their backs, Putin’s troops were in danger of being cut off from supplies. To save their skins, retreat was the last option the Russians had. At the end of last week, the Ukrainians managed to take the city without a fight.

A whole bouquet of western weapon systems

The Ukrainian victory was made possible by the precision artillery provided by the West in recent months: the American M777 howitzer, the German Panzerhaubitze 2000, the highly mobile French Caesar self-propelled howitzers, the Polish Krab and the Slovakian Zuzana.

Ukrainian soldiers from the west were trained on these systems at high speed. What they have in common is that they fire NATO-standard 155 millimeters of ammunition and are superior to the Russian guns.

But above all, the Ukrainians have learned, with the help of Western satellite imagery and expertly conducted reconnaissance work, to direct their artillery precisely at Russian targets. A skill that the opponent lacks. The combination of satellite-guided artillery ammunition and drone reconnaissance turns a regular howitzer into a “sniper rifle,” a Ukrainian officer told the US newspaper “New York Times.”

Himars brought Russians within reach without endangering Ukrainians

In addition to the modern artillery systems, the Ukrainians also managed to use the multiple rocket launchers “Himars” supplied by the US and Britain extremely efficiently. It fires up to six GPS-guided missiles, which can hit their target precisely at a distance of more than 80 kilometers. The equivalent system MARS II from Germany also belongs in this category.

For the Russians, the rocket launchers are devastating: they are within range of the Ukrainians, without being able to fire back. While Russia still had an artillery advantage of one in ten in the Donetsk battle in the summer, the ratio is now more or less balanced, according to Ukrainian sources. With the capture of Kherson, more and more targets on the occupied Crimean peninsula come within reach.

The Ukrainians’ homemade drones, which drop unguided grenades and fly at a height of several hundred meters, also greatly affected the morale of the Russian soldiers waiting in the trenches. Numerous videos of these planes, some of which cost as little as a few thousand francs, are circulating on the Internet and can wreak havoc and also heavily damage Russian military equipment.

Self-developed water drones, such as those used in the attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in its home port of Sevastopol, also show that Ukraine has significantly increased its weapon power. The remote-controlled kamikaze drones took the Russians completely by surprise. However, it is not possible to say whether the West helped in the development.