British artillery guns supplied to Ukraine are falling silent on the battlefield because of a lack of ammunition for them, frontline troops have told The Telegraph.

Ukrainian soldiers trained by Nato on L-119 howitzers have been reduced to firing them less than once a day because of a "catastrophic" shortage of shells for them.

One frontline unit said they had ended up using a Stalin-era field gun from World War II instead, as it still had stocks of shells available.

The revelation comes after Nato's most senior military official warned last week that the alliance was fast running out of artillery shells to give to Ukraine.

Rob Bauer, the Dutch admiral who chairs Nato's Military Committee, told the Warsaw Security Forum that "the bottom of the barrel is now visible".
The acuteness of the shortfall has now been laid bare by troops from Ukraine's 80th Air Assault Brigade, who received part of a batch of 36 L-119 Howitzers supplied to Kyiv by Britain last year.

#ukraine #tanks #russia

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