Estonia Warns Russia Expands War Preparations Against NATO as Artillery Shell Output Hits 7M.

Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service says Russia produced roughly 7 million artillery shells, rockets, and mortar rounds in 2025 while rebuilding strategic reserves depleted early in the Ukraine war. The warning underscores mounting pressure on NATO, including the United States, to accelerate ammunition production, air defense expansion, and industrial mobilization.

Estonia’s foreign intelligence service has dropped a blunt warning into Europe’s rearmament debate: Russia’s war economy is no longer just sustaining the grind in Ukraine; it is rebuilding the deep ammunition reserves needed for a future confrontation with the West. In its International Security and Estonia 2026 assessment released on 10 February 2026, the service argues that Moscow has expanded large-calibre munitions output fast enough to keep guns firing on the Ukrainian front while simultaneously refilling strategic stockpiles that were heavily depleted in 2022-2023.
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Estonian intelligence says Russia has surged artillery and rocket munitions output to sustain Ukraine operations while rebuilding wartime stockpiles for a future showdown, forcing NATO to accelerate its own ammunition, air-defense, and industrial mobilization (Picture source: Russian MoD).

The most revealing part of the Estonian assessment is the hard arithmetic: Russia’s artillery ammunition production has increased more than seventeenfold since 2021, rising from roughly 400,000 rounds to about 7 million shells, mortar rounds and rockets in 2025. That 2025 total breaks down into four families that map directly onto Russian doctrine and force structure: 3.4 million howitzer rounds in 122 mm, 152 mm and 203 mm; 2.3 million mortar rounds in 120 mm and 240 mm; 0.8 million tank and infantry fighting vehicle rounds in 100 mm, 115 mm and 125 mm; and 0.5 million multiple-launch rocket system munitions in 122 mm, 220 mm and 300 mm. The report also notes that during the most intense offensive phases early in 2022, daily Russian expenditure spiked as high as 60,000 rounds, then stabilized later at about 10,000 to 15,000 per day as stockpiles ran down and rationing set in.

The dominance of 122 mm and 152 mm howitzer production points to sustained reliance on tube artillery as the core engine of battlefield attrition. In Ukraine, these calibers feed systems ranging from the D-30 122 mm towed howitzer and 2S1 Gvozdika to self-propelled 152 mm workhorses such as 2S3 Akatsiya, 2S19 Msta-S, 2S5 Giatsint-S and the 2A65 Msta-B towed gun. The tactical effect is familiar to every Ukrainian brigade commander: layered fires that suppress, collapse trench lines, and isolate strongpoints by cutting routes with continuous fragmentation and airburst. The 203 mm share is smaller in number but operationally outsized, because 2S7 Pion and 2S7M Malka batteries specialize in smashing hardened targets, logistics nodes and defensive belts where sheer explosive mass matters more than elegance.

Mortar output, the second-largest category at 2.3 million rounds, is equally revealing. 120 mm mortars are the infantry commander’s rapid-reaction artillery, light enough to displace frequently, heavy enough to deliver lethal fragmentation and smoke, and accurate enough for the short-range duel that defines much of the current front. Their high production share suggests Russia is preparing for long periods of close combat where battalion and company fires decide whether assault groups can cross the last 500 meters. The inclusion of 240 mm rounds signals continued value placed on siege effects. The 2S4 Tyulpan 240 mm self-propelled mortar is a specialized tool for breaking urban strongpoints and deep shelters, firing a massive bomb that can collapse reinforced positions that smaller calibers merely scar.

The rocket category is smaller by count, but it is where Russia buys operational depth. 122 mm Grad and Tornado-G salvos are still the blunt instrument for saturating assembly areas, trenches and suspected gun lines. 220 mm Uragan and 300 mm Smerch or Tornado-S class rockets widen the footprint, enabling fires against rear-area concentrations, bridges, air-defense sites and logistics hubs beyond typical tube-artillery range. In Ukraine, these systems have been used not as precision scalpels but as area denial and disruption weapons, often timed to complicate rotations and resupply. Their future utility against NATO would be even sharper if paired with better targeting and electronic warfare, because the main problem for Russian rockets has not been reach but the kill chain.

The tank and infantry fighting vehicle ammunition line, 0.8 million rounds across 100 mm, 115 mm and 125 mm, points to a second doctrine that Ukraine has made painfully clear: armor is increasingly an artillery adjunct. 125 mm high-explosive fragmentation from T-72, T-80 and T-90 series tanks is routinely fired in direct or semi-indirect roles to punch lanes for infantry, while older 115 mm ammunition suggests continued combat use of refurbished T-62s in lower-intensity sectors. The 100 mm component likely supports platforms such as BMP-3 and legacy anti-tank guns, reinforcing Russia’s preference to keep even aging systems relevant through ammunition availability.

What makes Estonia’s assessment strategically unsettling is that domestic production is only part of the supply picture. The report estimates Russia has imported about 5 to 7 million rounds since 2023 from Iran and North Korea, and cites Ukrainian assessments that North Korean ammunition accounted for roughly half of Russian artillery expenditure on the Ukrainian front in the second half of 2025. This external buffer is precisely what allows Moscow to think about rebuilding reserves. The report pegs procurement cost for 2025 output at about 1 trillion roubles, while noting an older-model 152 mm shell costs Russia under 100,000 roubles in state procurement, several times cheaper than comparable Western 155 mm ammunition. Low unit cost translates into sustained volume, and sustained volume is the currency of attrition warfare.

Estonia also sketches how Russia is tightening the industrial sinews behind that volume. It highlights efforts to reduce dependence on imported inputs by producing nitrocellulose from domestically sourced wood and flax, while warning of bottlenecks in nitric acid and melange production concentrated at a small number of plants. In parallel, the report describes sanctions-evasion ecosystems that chase Western machinery and components through intermediaries, with military intelligence playing an enabling role. For NATO planners, this is not a footnote: the limiting factor in a prolonged high-intensity war is rarely the gun tube, it is the chemical and industrial plumbing that keeps propellant, explosives and fuzes flowing.

On the battlefield, Russia has paired mass ammunition with a changing method of war. Estonia describes a force being reorganized for unmanned warfare, including a dedicated unmanned systems branch ordered in autumn 2025 and a plan that could generate around 190 unmanned systems battalions. In Ukraine, drones have become the essential sensor layer that turns volume into effectiveness, spotting fall-of-shot, cueing counterbattery fires, and guiding assault teams through minefields. Ukrainian commanders have assessed that UAVs account for up to 70 percent of losses of weapons and military equipment, underscoring that the next Russian artillery advantage may not come from better shells, but from better targeting that makes even simple munitions disproportionately lethal.

For NATO, the report’s core warning is not that Russia will attack tomorrow. Estonia assesses Moscow has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or other NATO members in the coming year. The warning is that Russia is trying to buy time and shape conditions, while Europe re-arms. The Estonian intelligence leadership argues that Russia seeks to delay and hinder European rearmament because Moscow fears Europe could conduct independent military action against Russia within two to three years if current trends continue. That framing aligns with the industrial scramble now visible across the Alliance as European states expand shell production, invest in explosives plants, and accelerate procurement of long-range fires and air defense systems.

The implication for NATO’s deterrence posture is straightforward and uncomfortable. Russia is demonstrating that it can scale ammunition like a wartime power, absorb sanctions, supplement with authoritarian partners, and integrate drones into the fire chain to wring more lethality out of every round. NATO’s answer cannot be limited to buying more shells, though it must do that. It also needs deeper magazines of air defense interceptors, a counter-UAV breakthrough that makes cheap drones tactically irrelevant, and a resilient chemical and explosives base that does not depend on a handful of single points of failure. Estonia’s assessment reads like a reminder from the front line of European security: the ammunition race is no longer a supporting effort, it is the war’s center of gravity.