Could heavy weaponry turn the war in Ukraine’s favour? This Canadian fighting on the front lines thinks so


He has seen combat in West Africa, conducted training missions in Iraq and been awarded for his battlefield exploits.

But the war in Ukraine is something altogether different — both for the geopolitical stakes, which are enormous, and for the scale of the destruction that has been inflicted in less than three months.

“The amount of ordinance that’s been fired within these past couple of months completely surpasses and dwarfs the amount of ordinance and catastrophe that’s been seen (in recent conflicts),” said Paul, a Canadian volunteer fighter who asked that his full name not be used for security reasons. “It’s pretty shocking.”

What he and others say they are anxiously awaiting are the heavy weapons that Western nations have promised to deliver to Ukraine.

As troops are being fast-tracked through training on the more modern and more powerful foreign weapons, the hope is that these big guns will tip the battle against Russia.

“I think that it will very quickly change in Ukraine’s favour,” said Paul, a 27-year-old from Ottawa who has served with the French Foreign Legion in Central African Republic, Niger and Mali, Dubai and Iraq.

In its third month, the war has reached something of a temporary stalemate, one in which Russians and Ukrainians, equipped with similar weaponry, fire upon each other with little restraint in tug of war surges and retreats that move the front lines back and forth

“It’s quite literally World War One in the modern era,” Paul said.

Another Canadian volunteer, Francis Dion, says the war has been greatly transformed from urban fighting that he experienced in March in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv.

“It’s not the same war,” he told the Los Angeles Times from Ukraine in an interview published Friday. “It’s impossible. It’s a field battle, trenches, artillery, constant artillery. It never stops.”

One of the keys to overpowering the Russians will be the delivery of 155-millimetre howitzers.

The Russians and Ukrainians are currently using a howitzer model that has a range of between 15 and 21 kilometres, according to a report this week by British security analyst James Rushton for the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy.

The more modern M777 howitzers committed last month by the United States, Canada and Australia, as well as self-propelled variants promised by France and the Netherlands, all have a longer range than those in use by the Russians.

Sweden’s so-called Archer howitzers have a normal range of 40 kilometers and up to 60 kilometers with precision-guided shells that make them deadly accurate.

A US Defense Department spokesman said this week that more than 80 of the 90 howitzers promised to Ukraine have already been delivered.

“We know some of them are being used in combat because they’ve told us,” said John Kirby.

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said last week that Canadian soldiers are among those providing training to Ukrainians on the M777 howitzers.

Their addition to the Ukrainian arsenal could be pivotal in a city like Kharkiv, in the northwest, which is trying to keep the invading Russian forces at bay in the north and east.

If Ukraine can use their more powerful guns to force the Russians to a distance of up to 60 kilometers, their own attack will be paralyzed, much like a boxer up against an opponent with a longer reach.

“Russian artillery will simply lose the ability to strike,” Sergiy Grabskyi, a Ukrainain military expert, told Current Time TV.

Until then, it is a battle of blows traded across the front lines of the Russian-occupied territories. In Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces are lined up to the south, authorities on Friday imposed a strict curfew from May 8 until May 10, covering the May 9 Victory Day holiday on Monday.

The same warnings were issued in neighboring Mykolaiv.

“I think they will want to ‘congratulate’ us and intensify shelling until May 9,” said Mykolaiv Gov. Vitaly Kim.

Paul, who spoke to the Star from an undisclosed location in the south ahead of his first official mission under Ukrainian command, said the situation is dire.

“Right now, Russia’s kind of set up to take over the whole southern half of Ukraine where all of its ports are and a lot of its manufacturing power is,” he said.

A former recruiter with the Norman Brigade, a western volunteer unit, he said he split off from the group due to disagreements with the founder over safety protocols and joined the International Legion of Ukraine along with more than two dozen other foreigners.

Those with a basic military service background were funneled into regular Ukrainian infantry units. Those with combat experience, like him, were siphoned off for a special selection process.

Paul is now part of a group of twelve foreign fighters with elevated security clearances and special, clandestine duties.

“We’re doing missions that aren’t going to be in the trenches — that are going to be in front of the trenches, or behind the enemy trenches,” he said.

His impressions so far are marked by the professional and cultural differences between the European and western norms he is used to and those of some Ukrainian military leaders, who belong to the “very big old corps of ‘shut up and do what I tell you. ‘”

That can lead to delicate situations best handled by translators and diplomats. But the overwhelming emotion is goodwill and thankfulness.

“If they can see that you actually have something to give, that you’re not just wasting their time, they are very, very grateful to the point that you’re giving hugs with generals — that kind of grateful,” Paul said.

“They have tears in their eyes sometimes. They can’t believe that someone would fly from halfway across the world and spend their own money to come and fight with them. And that’s the way to explain it: we’re not fighting for them; we’re fighting with them against the tyranny of Russia.”

Allan Woods is a Montreal-based staff reporter for the Star. He covers global and national affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan

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