You cited Russia's summer artillery bombardment campaign, before HIMARs and expenditures brought that to a crashing halt?
Notice Russia stopped gaining major ground since June. The situation has changed significantly from the darkest days of the second phase.
Yes, the territorial defenders suffered horribly when Russia finally organized and brought its full force to bear.
Ukraine has 1 million mobilized, been training and equipping since March. The Kharkiv counter offensive and Kherson offensive are prime examples of Ukraine entering the fight and no longer simply losing.
Odd that you would cherry pick.
Not cherry picking, they are still using artillery in the defense of Kherson and in the offensive they are still doing in the East. Even the defense of Lyman area there are reports of lots of Russian artillery fire.
With a grain of salt that infantry never thinks there is enough counter fire when they are being targeted, pretty much every well sourced western media report is still saying that the Russians have a big advantage in tubes.
HIMARs is helping but has not removed the advantage.
Almost all of the extra artillery attacks were in the East and that reduced when they moved troops to the South (and fire increased there) and from the early days of HIMAR when a lot of large ammo dumps were hit.
Then the counter offensive rolled up a whole area and that put the Russians on their back foot. That was not a bloodless victory, anywhere that Russians fought back there were a lot of casualties and the Lyman area now there are a lot of casualties reported in the little press there is.
Russia seriously underestimated the will and ability to resist and had to pull back to a very limited front as they do not have enough troops committed. In that front there did advance and take rest of one of the Donbas areas. That was due to concentration of forces, especially artillery.