Hi everyone, I would like to raise a question that I don’t know if it has ever been addressed and I think this is the best sub for it.

We know about the list of armaments allegedly received by Wagner PMC for April and May.

In the past few days I was reading from a translated Russian forum (Top War) a complaint about the fact that during past summer/autumn Russia lost huge amounts of ammunition after the arrival of GMLRS missiles and today a certain quantity of the artillery shells provided to front-line units would instead be made up by HEAT ones, such as the 152 mm BP-540 (which weighs much less than a 152 mm HE, for obvious reasons too), suitable for direct fire against armoured targets. The Russians call “cumulative” this type of shells.

Yesterday, coincidentally, the pro-Russian Twitter user “Zoka” posted a video testifying to the use of HEAT projectiles from a 2S1 Gvozdika, calling such an event “rare”. We don’t even know if they were actually firing HEAT shells, as Russian SPHs generally do carry 4/5 of such shells inside them, together with 35/45 HE-Frag shells, and the howitzer is in an indirect fire mode in the video. But at this point, we could ask ourselves how rare the use of HEAT shells actually is or whether it is rather beginning to be a widespread trend, lately.

Is the use of this type of ammunition getting bigger, as far as you guys know? It would mean that the Russians have a relevant shortage of 152/122 mm OF-family HE-Frag shells. Good news for the Ukrainians if that’s the case, as this type of ammo is much less dangerous for infantry. But I wonder - for an effective use they have to be within a few kilometres from the target, which would even expose them to ATGM fire.

Somewhat I agree with the claim of them being short of everything else before that (tanks, IFVs…). But it is possible that a certain part of their stockpile is made up by HEAT shells that they have to dispose of, perhaps even for logistical reasons. In any case, their firing capacity has certainly declined since its peak in June when they were said to be close to 60k shells fired per day, coinciding with the heaviest fighting in the Sievierodonetsk Raion. Howitzers' wear is also an issue.