Artillery was Russia’s ‘god of war’ long before Ukraine

• The key to Russian operations against Ukraine has been overwhelming artillery fire.

• For Western armies, the value of artillery seemed to diminish against the glamour of smart bombs.

• Russian officers see artillery as a means to lay waste to enemy lines and terrify their defenders.

The Russian cannon were murderous, recalled a survivor. “All this time the formidable artillery of the redoubts in the center of the enemy’s line was working such fearful havoc in our ranks.”

The date was Sept. 7, 1812, the place the Battle of Borodino, and the writer Baron Louis-François Lejeune, a staff officer in Napoleon’s army. But it could just as easily have been a German soldier at Stalingrad in 1943, or a Ukrainian soldier at Bakhmut in 2023.

Artillery is the “god of war,” Joseph Stalin famously declared decades ago. For centuries, Russia has worshipped the cult of the cannon and still does today. In the Ukraine war, it is good, old artillery more than its Spetznaz commandos or Sukhoi fighter jets that has been the key to Russian operations, enabling tactically clumsy Russian infantry and armor to advance under bombardments as intense as 10,000 shells per day. Russia had about 5,000 artillery pieces in Ukraine as of February 2024, according to some estimates.

“The significance of artillery in Russian warfare extends beyond its battlefield effectiveness,” wrote Giangiuseppe Pili, Brett Evans and Ryder Finn, in an essay for the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “Through history and to the present moment, its deployment has carried direct political meaning, serving as a visible demonstration of Russia’s determination to achieve its objectives, regardless of the level of destruction or civilian casualties involved.”

Russia doesn’t just view artillery as an instrument of destruction, but also as a weapon to terrify its enemies. “The psychological impact of Russian artillery is not an unintended consequence but a deliberate feature of its warfighting strategy,” the authors argue.

Russia’s use of artillery dates back to the 16th Century, when cannon became prevalent on European battlefields. As in other European armies during the 18th and 19th Centuries, the artillery became more prestigious than the infantry and cavalry, because it required educated officers who could understand mathematics (Napoleon began his career as a young artillery officer).

The heavy barrage tactics pummeling Ukrainian troops and trenches trace their roots to the First World War. Despite the poor performance of the Tsarist armies on the Eastern Front, it was the innovative use of massed artillery that enabled the Brusilov Offensive of 1916, one of Russia’s few successful offensives in WWI. The preparatory bombardment used new techniques such as spotter planes to direct gunfire, and short but intense barrages to maximize surprise. The deluge of shells stunned the Austro-Hungarian defenders and blew holes in the barbed wire, enabling the Russian infantry to capture 26,000 troops in one day.

“The Russian military experience in artillery warfare in the First World War laid the foundation for the use of artillery by Russian forces: the notable reliance on aerial reconnaissance for accurate indirect artillery barrages; effective use of artillery in psychological operations; and the utilization of artillery as an obstacle-clearing tool to allow for rapid offensive maneuvers,” RUSI said.

The zenith of Russia’s artillery was World War II, a conflict Russians call the Great Patriotic War that’s memorialized by endless documentaries and propaganda films of fiery Katyusha rockets lighting up the night. In the final Soviet drive in Berlin in April 1945, the Red Army massed nearly 10,000 howitzers, mortars and multiple rocket launchers that may have fired more than a million shells on the first day.

Before the war, Russian experts recommended massing 75 to 100 guns per kilometer to break enemy defenses. “In the later years of the Second World War, Soviet density of firepower on breakthrough fronts was between 150 and 200 guns per kilometer,” or about 320 guns per mile, RUSI noted. This disparity “shows the reliance of the Red Army on its industrial capability to overwhelm its enemies with devastating barrages of artillery fire.”

Had Russia invaded Western Europe during the Cold War, artillery would have provided much of the firepower for a thrust toward the Rhine River. But cannon proved of limited value in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

As in 21st-century Western armies, the perceived value of artillery seemed to diminish against the glamour of smart bombs and guided missiles. “In the time of Suvorov [an 18th Century Russian general], artillery was one of the most esteemed and prestigious branches of the Russian military — a view that was largely forgotten by the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” the RUSI authors noted.

Indeed, drones and air-launched glide bombs have become the backbone of successful new Russian assault tactics. Yet when the weather is too bad for bombers to fly, and the jamming too heavy for drones to function, artillery has its moment.

Russia has fielded a menagerie of Soviet-era and post-Soviet artillery in Ukraine. Howitzers include the new 2S19 Msta-SM2 self-propelled 152-mm howitzer (with a range of up to 25 miles), as well as old M-30 122-mm towed howitzers from World War II (range about 7 miles).

Russia has also deployed an array of truck-mounted multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), including the new Tornado-S with 12 300-mm rockets (range of up to 75 miles) and the BM-27 Uragan 220-mm rocket system (range of up to 45 miles). While multiple rocket launchers were used for inaccurate but devastating saturation bombardment in World War II, modern Russian MLRS can also fire guided projectiles.

“Artillery is seen as an intermediate weapon between the strategic weapons (such as nuclear missiles) and purely conventional armaments,” RUSI concluded. “There is no reason to believe that in future wars Russia will not use artillery as a means to exert political and psychological pressure, and express determination, both internally and externally.”

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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