Ukraine says it's making more exploding drones to use instead of artillery as ammo supplies from its allies falter

• Ukraine is boosting its ammunition and drone production, its deputy defense minister said.
• Western supplies are dwindling, constraining Ukraine's ability to fight.

A Ukrainian official said the country is ramping up the production of explosive drones to mitigate dwindling supplies of ammunition from its allies.

The effort comes as help from major allies — the US and European nations — is floundering.

Ivan Gavrylyuk, Ukraine's deputy defense minister, told the BBC that Ukraine was pushing to make more of its own supplies.

He said Ukraine will make more explosive drones to compensate for the ammunition shortages that don't look set to end.

"Ukraine decided to solve these issues by creating a powerful production of UAVs," he said, referring to drones with an acronym short for "unmanned aerial vehicle."

Both Russia and Ukraine have invested heavily in drones which fly straight into their target and explode.

Ukraine will also make more artillery ammunition, he said: both for its own Soviet-era weaponry and also the 155mm caliber used in many artillery pieces donated by Western countries.

Other Ukrainian officials have said that the lack of new Western supplies have been harming its ability to fight off Russia's invasion.

Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said Ukraine was "redistributing" what it does have and scaling back military operations because of the shortages.

"We're replanning tasks that we had set for ourselves and making them smaller because we need to provide for them," he told Reuters in an interview.

He said shortages are being felt "across the entire front line."

Ukraine has also been firing thousands of rounds of artillery less a day than it wants to, because of limited supplies.

Some of Ukraine's allies say they just don't have any more to give.

An EU official told Politico that EU countries would likely fail to meet a target of sending one million rounds of ammunition by next March. The official said they can't make the rounds fast enough.

NATO warned in October that remaining stockpiles which Western countries could send Ukraine are almost empty.

A White House official warned Congress earlier that this month that "without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks."

If that happens, the official said, Russia would win.

But an increase in assistance from its allies doesn't look likely any time soon, Business Insider's Paul Squire previously reported.

In the US, Senate Republicans have ignored President Joe Biden's entreaties to approve more military funding, saying that he must first meet their demands on funding for the US southern border.

And in the EU, $52 billion in support is being held up by Hungary, a Western state with closer ties than most to Russia.

Ukraine had already been increasing its domestic weapons manufacturing, hoping to reduce its reliance on supplies from Western allies.

These efforts have included Ukraine manufacturing its own howitzers, as well as ramping up its production of missiles, drones, and ammunition.

Russia is doing the same, at least in part because international sanctions are designed to limit its ability to get weapons and parts from other countries.

Russia has also been increasing its domestic production of drones.