Ukraine shifted to hammering Russian defenses with artillery after losing a lot of Western armor in its early counter-offensives: report

• Ukraine has switched up its tactics in its counteroffensive, reports say.
• Russia's extensive defenses along the front line have slowed Ukraine's progress.

Ukrainian ground forces have switched tactics in their counteroffensive to focus on artillery bombardment on Russian positions instead of attempting to push through with heavy armor, reports said.

Ukraine's army has made slow and often costly gains pushing against Russian defensive lines using tanks and armored vehicles supplied by its allies.

Ukrainian commanders told the Financial Times that there was increasing use of heavy artillery instead, intended to clear a path for sappers and infantry units.

The report comes after Ukraine suffered considerable losses of Western-supplied heavy vehicles.

However, according to the think tank the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces launched a significant mechanized counteroffensive operation in western Zaporizhia on July 26, and appear to have broken through some Russian defensive positions there.

Two unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times that they believe these forces, which include infantry fighting vehicles and tanks, are the main attack of the counteroffensive underway since June, though others cautioned that they might be preparatory operations for the main thrust or perhaps just reinforcements to replenish war-weary units, the Times reported.

It was on machines such as Bradley infantry-fighting vehicles, tanks, and mine-clearing equipment that Ukraine had pinned much of its hopes for its counteroffensive.

But it has come up against what one retired US general called "20 kilometers of hell" — dense Russian fortifications in the form of minefields and "dragon's teeth" anti-tank obstacles, which provide a barrier for heavy vehicles to be then picked off by missile strikes.

A large proportion of the US-supplied Bradley infantry-fighting vehicles have been lost or damaged, the open-source tracking project Oryx found.

The project has documented damage to, or loss of, 11 Western-supplied Leopard tanks, which were first seen on the battlefield in June.

"You can no longer do anything with just a tank, with some armor, because the minefield is too deep, and sooner or later, it will stop, and then it will be destroyed by concentrated fire," the commander in chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, told The Washington Post last month.

The changed tactic is slowing Ukrainian losses, the FT reported.

But by turning to artillery bombardments, Ukraine faces further issues — namely, a shortage of 155 mm munitions, among others.

Western allies have questioned whether Ukraine can sustain the level of shelling needed to make the newer strategy work, the FT reported.

Analysis suggests that Ukraine is outgunning Russia in the artillery fight, taking out four Russian howitzers for every Ukrainian one destroyed, Forbes reported.

The use of controversial US-supplied cluster munitions, granted by the White House on July 20, may also help mitigate Ukraine's ammunition problem.

By sending out a spray of bomblets, cluster munitions are as effective at clearing trenches as eight conventional shells, The Kyiv Independent said.