Ukraine Made Exactly One Copy Of Its Best Cannon. It Just Joined The War.

The Kramatorsk Heavy Machinery Plant, in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, built exactly one 2S22 howitzer around five years ago.

As a Russian army attacked across Ukraine along multiple fronts starting on Feb. 23, the 155-millimeter 2S22, mounted on a six-by-six KrAZ-6322 truck, narrowly escaped destruction—by Kramatorsk’s own employees.

But the self-propelled howitzer, the most sophisticated big gun Ukrainian industry ever has developed, survived. And now, with the Russians reeling and Ukrainian forces on the move, it’s shooting back at the invaders.

The Ukrainian army, like the Russian army, generally follows Soviet doctrine. It’s artillery-centric. Other forces—tanks, infantry, engineers—exist to position and protect the guns, which deliver the decisive firepower.

It’s for that reason that the active brigades in Kyiv’s army have a battalion of 2S1 or 2S3 tracked 122-millimeter or 152-millimeter howitzers as well as a battalion of BM-21 122-millimeter rocket-launchers. A battalion might have a dozen or 18 guns or launchers.

In addition, the Ukrainian army has independent artillery and missile brigades with bigger artillery including 2S7 203-millimeter howitzers, 300-millimeter BM-30 rocket-launchers and Tochka ballistic missiles.

Kyiv’s guns and rockets aren’t new. Most are more than 30 years old. But the gunners are skilled and creative and they’ve learned to take cues from special operations forces, volunteer drone crews and even civilians calling in Russian positions on their cell phones. Some artillery batteries have access to Kvitnyk laser-guided shells that precisely can hit vehicles nestled in alleyways and trenches.

When a Russian force barreled toward Kyiv in the early weeks of the current campaign, Ukrainian anti-tank missile teams slowed them down. “But what killed them was our artillery,” a senior adviser to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, told Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds from the Royal Services Institute in London.

But the war has been hard on Ukraine’s artillery. Ukrainian brigades have lost at least 67—and probably many more—of the 1,800 guns and launchers they had in service or in reserve before the war.

Perhaps the greater problem is that Kyiv has called up tens of thousands of reservists and also formed territorial brigades. Reserve and territorial formations need artillery, too—potentially straining the pre-war stockpile. There is evidence the territorials are using their old 100-millimeter anti-tank guns for indirect fire.

Hundreds of fresh artillery pieces are en route from the United States and other NATO countries. Wheeled Cesars from France. Tracked PzH 2000s from Germany and The Netherlands. Towed American M-777s. The first of the donated guns, and newly-trained crews, finally are arriving at the front line.

The growing demand for artillery, perhaps exacerbated by recent shifts in the war’s momentum, explains why the Ukrainian army bothered to preserve one prototype gun that only had just begun trials.

In the heady early hours of the war, when it perhaps seemed like the Russian army might perform better than it has done, officials at the Kramatorsk factory prepared to destroy the sole 2S22. “Destroy it so that [it] does not go to the enemy,” is how Ukrainian politician Serhiy Pashynskyi described the officials’ thinking.

But the Russian offensive met stiff resistance and ground to a halt—first in the south, then in the north. Today in the east, Ukrainian brigades around Kharkiv, just north of Kramatorsk, have launched a counteroffensive. For the 2S22, the risk of capture faded.

The 28-ton 2S22 had fired a few rounds in testing back in October. It apparently worked just fine. So in recent weeks, Kramatorsk packed up the gun and deployed it along the front. Pashynskyi circulated videos depicting the 2S22 firing at Russian targets spotted by drones.

One wrinkle is that the 2S22 fires 155-millimeter shells, the standard NATO caliber, rather than Soviet-caliber shells. Production problems at factories in Ukraine mean the Soviet calibers are in ever-shorter supply. On the other hand, there are a dozen countries that can supply NATO-size shells in large quantities.

In that sense, the 2S22 design might actually become more useful as the war grinds on. It’s unclear whether Kramatorsk is in a position to make more of the howitzers.

One gun alone cannot bend the trajectory of a war. The 2S22 is an oddity whose inspiring story might be more valuable than its actual firepower is.

But a thousand guns can bend a war. And it’s evident Ukraine is working hard to push every gun it can to the front.