Pripyat, Ukraine
DailyExpertNews
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A few miles from the Belarusian border, Ukrainian troops are training for what they expect to be a brutal spring.
Aging T-72 tanks – some twice as old as their crews – fire bullets into the fog, while ground troops practice storming abandoned buildings. Part of the training takes place in the eerily quiet town of Pripyat, abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
As troops are put to the test, Lieutenant General Serhiy Naiev takes delivery of a dozen pick-up trucks armed with heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, a crowdfunded initiative to help Ukraine fend off Iranian-made Shahed drones , which caused so much damage to the electricity infrastructure of Ukraine.
But Naiev, a stocky and affable commander, believes the next phase of this war will be about tanks. And that doesn’t mean its old T-72s but more modern machines like German Leopard 2s and British Challengers. Ukrainian officials say they need several hundred main battle tanks – not only to defend their current positions, but also to take on the enemy in the coming months.
“Of course we need a large number of Western tanks. They are much better than the Soviet models and can help us move forward,” Naiev said. “We are creating new military units. And our next actions will depend on their combat readiness. Western aid is therefore extremely important.”
Chief among their requests is the Leopard 2, which is relatively easy to maintain and operate and is in service with many NATO countries. Both military and political leaders in Ukraine hoped Friday’s meeting of Ukrainian partners in Ramstein would give the green light to their delivery, but Germany held back.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said after the meeting that he and German counterpart Boris Pistorius had “a frank discussion about Leopard 2s … to be continued.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential government, told DailyExpertNews on Friday: “We are disappointed. We understand that some countries have inhibitions. But the slower this goes, the more of our soldiers and civilians are killed.
“It would be significant if Germany took a leading position here.”
He claims that “300 to 400 of these tanks would actually outnumber 2,000 to 3,000 Soviet-era tanks… It would greatly accelerate the pace of the war and usher in its closing stages.”
In the meantime, Ukrainian officials say they are running out of spare parts for their existing Soviet-era tanks, even as they scour other former Soviet bloc states for supplies.
The Ukrainians fear that a second Russian offensive could begin within two months. By spring, 150,000 Russians who were called up last fall will have been trained and likely incorporated into combat-ready units. For the Ukrainians it is a race against time. But they are essentially turning an army based on Soviet hardware into one that uses advanced Western weapons at warp speed.
They don’t get M1 Abrams main battle tanks, which are powerful but difficult to maintain. Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s chief policy adviser, said of the M1 that it is “expensive. It’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine.”
Experts also believe that the German tanks can really make a difference. “Leopard 2 is a modern, well-protected main battle tank with good sensors,” Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow in Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told DailyExpertNews.
“It was originally designed to be serviced by conscripts and is therefore easier to maintain in combat than some other NATO designs such as the Challenger 2. There is also an existing production line to supply Leopard 2s with spare parts.”
But other weapons keep pouring in: Stryker armored vehicles and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles from the US, howitzers from Finland, the advanced ARCHER artillery system and anti-tank guns from Sweden.
The Ukrainian army must train units on the new equipment and integrate it into existing formations.
“The whole unit should be equipped with the same vehicle, so an entire battalion is equipped with Bradleys, if we get them, or Leopards,” Lieutenant General Naiev told DailyExpertNews.
Several senior Ukrainian officials have said Ukraine wants to come to the fore before Russia reinforces its lines and its tactical battalion groups. The front lines – all the way from the Russian border in the northeast to the Black Sea – have changed little since the Ukrainian advance into Kharkiv and Kherson in the fall.
Podolyak said fast deliveries of modern tanks would locate the war. “It would not spread, but would remain in the occupied territories and be decided with tank warfare.”
Ukraine needs tanks to clear occupied land quickly, as well as longer-range missiles, Podolyak said. He expects the Russians to “bring in a lot more troops, a lot of old Soviet equipment, everything, by our estimates, that they left behind.”
The Russians appear to be trying to reduce the vulnerability of their ammunition stockpiles and troop concentrations by moving them further from the front lines, perhaps even beyond the reach of the US HIMARS systems that Ukraine has effectively used against such targets.
The list of hardware the Ukrainians want seems to be getting longer, but Podolyak replies: “Our guys don’t leave the battlefield, even if they don’t get new weapons. They will just die more often and with greater regularity.
“I understand that some countries may be tired of this war,” Podolyak told DailyExpertNews.
“But we are the ones who pay the real price for freedom. We are the ones whose people are dying from Russian aggression.”
