As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its 11th month, US and Ukrainian officials share with CNN that Russia’s artillery fire is down dramatically from its wartime high, as much as 75 %.

CNN reported this.

US and Ukrainian officials don’t yet have a clear or singular explanation. Russia may be rationing artillery rounds due to low supplies, or it could be part of a broader reassessment of tactics in the face of successful Ukrainian offenses.

Previously, experts claimed that Russia might run out of high-precision ammunition: cruise and ballistic missiles. But the invaders did not spare ordinary artillery shells.

However, US officials note that the dramatically reduced rate of artillery fire might indicate that the prolonged and brutal artillery strikes have exhausted the Russian ammunition stockpiles.

Last month, a senior US military official shared that Russia has had to resort to 40-year-old artillery shells as their supply of new ammo dwindled. To the US, the use of degraded ammunition, as well as the Kremlin’s outreach to countries like North Korea and Iran, was a sign of Russia’s diminished stockpiles of weaponry.

The rationing of ammunition and a lower rate of fire appears to be a step back from Russian military doctrine, which traditionally calls for the heavy bombardment of a target area with massive artillery and rocket fire. That strategy played out in cities like Mariupol and Melitopol as Russian forces used punishing strikes to drive slow and brutal advances.

According to one US defense official, the Russians’ declining rate of fire is not linear, and there are days when Russians still fire far more artillery rounds – particularly around the eastern Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Kreminna.

US and Ukrainian officials have offered widely different estimates of the Russian fire. The US officials claim the rate has dropped from 20,000 rounds per day to approximately 5,000 per day on average. Ukraine estimates that the rate has dropped from 60,000 to 20,000 per day. Overall, both estimates point to a similar downward trend.

For comparison, Ukraine produces on average about 4,000-7,000 artillery rounds per day – much less than Russia.

The reason for such low rates is a strict restriction on the use of one’s own stocks of ammunition. Ukrainian troops rapidly burned through their own supply of Soviet-era 152 mm ammunition when the war erupted, and are now completely dependent on foreign supplies.

Officials have also suggested that the strategy shift could be the doing of the recently installed Russian commander, General Sergey Surovikin, who the US believes to be more competent than his predecessors.