Russian artillery fire down by nearly 75%, US officials say, in latest sign of struggles for Moscow

US and Ukrainian officials don’t yet have a clear or singular explanation. The strike also raised questions among prominent Russian military bloggers about the basic competence of the Russian military brass, which had apparently decided to house hundreds of Russian troops next to an obvious Ukrainian target. “Maybe this one strike is a drop in the bucket, but the bucket is getting smaller,” a US defense official said, referring to the Russians’ dwindling stockpiles. US and Ukrainian officials have offered widely different estimates of Russian fire, with US officials saying the rate has dropped from 20,000 rounds per day to around 5,000 per day on average. A Ukrainian self-propelled artillery shoots towards Russian forces at a frontline in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Saturday, December 24, 2022.