This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
US-made weapons continue to be actively used on Ukraine’s battlefields despite a temporary pause in military aid from the United States.
Deliveries of ammunition and weapons resumed on March 12 after being suspended for just over a week.
The suspension followed an Oval Office row between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28.
RFE/RL’s Maryan Kushnir met frontline troops in the eastern Donetsk region in early March.
He found them using the US Paladin howitzer and Bradley fighting vehicles, as well as the M777 howitzer, which is manufactured in the United States and United Kingdom.
The weapons were under heavy and near constant use.
“The Ukrainian troops have opened intensive fire near [the town of] Kurakhove,” said Kushnir, standing next to a M777. “They’ve just fired more than 20 shells, and the firing hasn’t stopped. This type of artillery arrived in 2022 from the United States. There are many such guns on the front line and they are used widely, as are NATO-caliber shells. The firing never stops, as you can see.”
The soldiers Kushnir interviewed said they believed the suspension of military aid had had little impact so far.
“As far as I know, we are manufacturing shells now, so I don’t think we will have any problems with the supply,” one unnamed soldier told Kushnir. “And we will still have these guns, too. If something happens in the future, we can still repair them. They are being repaired and restored so we can use them again.”
“It’s not just America that’s helping us,” said another unnamed soldier. “We will hold out and this situation will stop.”
According to the Germany-based Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the United States supplied $67 billion of military aid between the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and December 2024.
Europe provide $65 billion in the same period.
Fedir Venislavsky, who sits on the defense committee of the Ukrainian parliament, estimated in early March that Ukraine’s weapons supplies would last just six months without US military aid.
