The Kremlin Sent An 80-Year-Old Howitzer To Ukraine

An intensive Russian artillery barrage, the first week of October, was one of the earliest and clearest signs the Russians planned to assault Avdiivka, a Ukrainian stronghold just northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

It’s possible an 80-year-old howitzer participated in the bombardment. It may be the oldest artillery piece to appear so far in Russia’s 21-month wider war on Ukraine.

A video that appeared on social media on Sunday depicts a D-1 152-millimeter towed howitzer, in service with the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade, firing from a position reportedly somewhere near Horlivka, 10 miles north of Avdiivka.

The four-ton D-1 entered production in 1943. Around 2,800 of the guns equipped Soviet army artillery formations until the 1970s. A few of the guns obviously lingered in some warehouse somewhere until the Kremlin, growing hungrier for artillery, dusted off some of them and assigned them to the 132nd Brigade, which is staffed by pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists.

It’s obvious why the Russians and their allies would bother with an 80-year-old howitzer that, in its prime, lobbed a 90-pound shell just eight miles—half the range of a modern howitzer. Russian forces in Ukraine have lost no fewer than a thousand howitzers and rocket-launchers—and the loss rate has quickened as Ukrainian counterbattery methods have improved.

Although they were in range, it’s not clear that the 132nd Brigade’s gunners participated in the initial bombardment of Ukrainian positions around Avdiivka: the first phase in a weekslong operation that, so far, has proved disastrous for the 2nd Combined Arms Army and its several constituent brigades and regiments.

The equivalent of three Russian brigades, each with around 2,000 men, repeatedly have attacked toward Avdiivka. Ukrainian mines, drones and artillery have destroyed a third of that force.

But the Russians keep attacking—and many of their big guns keep firing in support. Notably, the Russian artillery corps’ losses around Avdiivka have been much lighter than the corps’ recent losses in southern Ukraine: independent analysts have counted just a handful of wrecked artillery pieces around Avdiivka.

It’s possible the fighting in the south drove home the need for howitzer and launcher crews to keep moving and stay under cover in order to avoid retaliatory counterbattery strikes. “A Russian artillery battalion commander, who is reportedly fighting in the [Avdiivka] area, claimed that Russian forces are paying significant attention to counterbattery combat,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. noted.

“Another source who also claimed to be fighting in the area reported that Russian forces are using electronic-warfare systems, conducting sound artillery preparation of the battlefield and are demonstrating ‘clear interaction’ between command headquarters, assault groups, aerial reconnaissance and artillery elements.”

All that is to say, the appearance of an 80-year-old D-1 howitzer in the vicinity of Russian forces’ main offensive effort speaks to the Kremlin’s steep losses in big guns and launchers, and its desperation to make good those losses as the war grinds on and Russian industry struggles to meet demand for heavy weaponry.

But the D-1’s age and lack of range isn’t indicative of an overall collapse in Russian fire-support. The Russians still have thousands of artillery pieces, and they’re getting better at using them.

And while ammunition supplies are under strain, ISW projected the production and import of shells and rockets “will likely allow Russian forces to sustain sufficient rates of artillery fire in Ukraine in 2024, albeit at a relatively lower level than during 2022.”