Press service of the Ukrainian 43rd Artillery Brigade has published some photos that demonstrate two things: first is that Soviet 203mm self-propelled artillery systems are still in active service with Ukraine's armed forces, and second is that they still have ammunition to keep firing on russians which is a wonder in itself.
That is because such ammunition is hard to come across. Among the Eastern European states, Ukraine is the only one that uses 203mm artillery, and Western Europe's tradition doesn't know this caliber at all. When it came to discussing the production of ammunition for Ukraine in partner countries, the 203mm was never mentioned.
Read more: Video Compilation of the Most Spectacular Footage of the 203mm Pion 2S7 Self-Propelled Gun Units
Here we can only assume where the shells might have come from, as it's too little of a chance Ukraine's own stocks haven't run out in almost 18 months of all-out continental war.
One possible source is the United States. In June 2023, the Pentagon announced the provision of 203mm artillery rounds, and later that month appeared unconfirmed reports that those shells already arrived on the Ukrainian frontlines. Precisely speaking, the M106 artillery munitions – the primary type of ammunition for the M110 self-propelled howitzer.
The M106 shell weighs 204 lbs (roughly 93 kg), it can cover a distance of 10.4 miles (16.8 km). Though the interesting part is, The Military Balance 2023 reference book says the U.S. Army has no M110 howitzers either in service or storage.
Prior to the American delivery, there was a report in January 2023 revealing that Ukrainian artillerymen had started using 53-G-620-Sh bunker-buster munitions for the B-4 howitzers, from the WWII era, which have the same 203mm caliber. It was such an "exotic" munition that it only left us guessing where they could come from.
Editors from Defence24 assumed one of the potential supplies could be Albania since it received some B-4s from the USSR, a more prosaic explanation – shells were seized from the russians who still keep around 40 B-4s in storage.
Theoretically, some 53-G-620-Sh munitions might also have been found in Ukrainian old storage bases. Although Ukraine never had any B-4s kept in reserve war stocks.
That said, we should also not forget that Poland and the Czech Republic had 2S7 Pion guns in active service until the early 2000s. Czechia sold them to Angola, while the fate of the Polish giant howitzers is unclear. Both these countries could have some 203mm ammunition left from those times.
Read more: Ukrainian Troops Showed How They Destroyed Another russian Pion Self-Propelled Cannon (Video)
