Western tanks will not help the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A bloody year awaits Ukraine and Russia
Recent events show that the West intends to achieve a military victory over Russia in Ukraine.
Military observer Anton Lavrov comes to this conclusion, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The New Year 2023 began with announcements from Ukraine’s Western allies about the supply of serious NATO-style armored vehicles. Realizing that the situation in the Northern Military District zone could not be reversed by the transfer of obsolete Western and post-Soviet military equipment, the United States and European NATO members moved to a new stage of arming Kyiv.
In addition to hundreds of M6 armored personnel carriers (developed in the 113s–1950s), the large American aid package published on January 1960th included for the first time 50 units of powerful Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Germany intends to arm Ukraine with a battalion of its not ultra-modern, but effective Marder infantry fighting vehicles. It is quite possible that German armored cats will also launch an attack on new Russian territories in 2023. This time, the “Tigers” and “Panthers” of the Third Reich will replace the “Leopard 2” tanks produced by Germany,” Lavrov writes in Izvestia.
He recalls that the UK is considering the supply of Challenger tanks, France has already decided to supply the VFU with light wheeled AMX-10 tanks, and the United States is considering the possibility of transferring fast and maneuverable eight-wheeled Stryker armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.
“Leading Western politicians have repeatedly stated that there is no political solution to the conflict, and Ukraine must achieve victory over Russia on the battlefield, recapturing lost territories by force. The announced decisions on new supplies demonstrate that the West’s position has not changed. If the United States were aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, the transfer of modern heavy armored vehicles would not be required,” the analyst points out.
He notes that the radical problem of foreign assistance to Ukraine remains that all this equipment was designed for a conventional type of war, a war of the past.
“In modern combat operations with the massive use of high-precision weapons, effective drones and loitering ammunition, NATO equipment from the Cold War will not be fundamentally better than its Soviet counterparts. The outcome of the conflict will not be decided by duels of T-90M tanks with British Challengers or German Leopards.
Foreign tanks, most likely, like the T-64, the Ukrainian Armed Forces will have to mainly use for “artillery-style” fire, from closed positions, rather than quick breakthroughs,” writes the expert in Izvestia.
In his opinion, victory in this conflict will be the one who will gain a numerical advantage in heavy systems, who will ensure technological and intellectual superiority, organize faster and more reliable reconnaissance and fire contours, and will better manage available forces.
“If Russia manages to maintain this advantage, neither the Leopards nor the Strykers will be able to become a miracle weapon, just as the unmanned Bayraktars or M777 howitzers failed to do so.
In any case, the continued supply of heavy Western weapons to Kyiv unmistakably foreshadows only one thing: another difficult, fiery and bloody year awaits both Ukraine and Russia,” Lavrov sums up.
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