New Delhi: The year was 1943. Blows from 3,000 gun barrels per mile, packed along a 25-mile front, fell together on the darkness-cloaked frontlines around Orel between the Oka and Orlik rivers in Ukraine. The savage bombardment, which marked the beginning of the Soviet Union’s counter-offensive at Kursk in the summer, exceeded the shelling in the great battles of El Alamein and Verdun by a factor of five and ten.

Major-General Peter Petrovich Sabennikoff watched the effects of the artillery with pleasure: “The Germans dance when she sings.”

Faced with endless bombardment, historian A. V. Griniev noted, some German soldiers “literally went mad.” “Alas,” lamented General Gotthard Heinrici, considered among the most brilliant of German defensive tacticians, “the Russian artillery is very good. It is very accurate and, unfortunately, very mobile.”

Learning from such historic triumphs,Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military put their faith in missile troops and artillery to bludgeon their way past Ukraine’s defences.

The war began with giant barrages of artillery fire — howitzers, rockets, and missiles — aimed at levelling Ukrainian forward positions and decapitating their command centres, before Russian tanks and troops moved in. Estimates suggest that 1,100 missiles hit Ukraine in the first 10 days of the war alone.  

Earlier this month, Russia was estimated to still be firing 20,000 artillery rounds per day…