Ukraine to receive both Leopard and Abrams tanks sooner or later - military expert Zgurets

Meeting in the Ramstein format

So, let's start with the news about weapons. The meeting in Ramstein, when it was announced that a significant number of missiles would be transferred to the NASAMS medium-range and Avenger short-range systems, continued. Yesterday, the Italian Foreign Minister announced that, together with France, they are preparing to transfer to Ukraine the well-known SAMP/T system, which, like Patriot, can shoot down enemy ballistic missiles. This will be in the 6th package that Italy is preparing to transfer to Ukraine. This is quite important news.

Now about the tanks. In addition to the fact that the meeting in Ramstein did not result in a landmark decision to supply us with Leopards, Ukraine has already agreed to train our crews to fight with both Challengers and Leopards, which is the basis for the tanks we will receive in the near future. It has become known that Poland, in addition to creating a smaller coalition for the supply of Leopards, has announced a more interesting and important step. It is about the fact that Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said that the country is preparing to transfer another batch of T-72 and BMP-1 tanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Their number will be enough to form one brigade. It will be about 40 tanks and 100 IFVs. It is also known that Poland is committed to training personnel for this brigade. This is good news that Poland and other countries are working to ensure our victory over Russia as soon as possible.

Roman Ponomarenko, a military officer and candidate of historical sciences, noted that if we compare the current situation with 1919, first of all, today Ukraine is united. In 1919, we were divided. The Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR) and the Ukrainian People's Republic, although they had common interests, each waged their own war. The WUPR army often did not perform well in battles on the territory of continental Ukraine, which led to certain historical events. Now Ukraine has a single military camp. Both in the west and in the east, our people are united and show their desire to win this war and to defend the right to an independent state and existence.

Probability of a new Russian offensive

According to Roman Ponomarenko, Gerasimov dreams of a World War II-level operation: a large encirclement, tank wedges, a mass of aircraft in the air, and artillery training. He has long dreamed of being in a situation where he could use a large number of troops, throwing whole regiments and divisions ahead of him, rather than battalion tactical groups as before. Now he has the resources for this. Russia has mobilized and conscripted 300,000-500,000 people, according to various estimates, and mobilization is ongoing, and new units are being formed. They have the human resources for this. We will soon see what is happening with the equipment. Roman Ponomarenko believes that the Russian Federation will gather equipment for one big offensive, so we need to be prepared for the fact that they will not wait until spring for the US and other allies to help us, but will try to launch an offensive before the aid arrives.

Possible Russian offensive in the Zaporizhzhia direction

Zaporizhzhia is beneficial to the Russians because there is a specific target of the offensive - the city of Zaporizhzhia itself, which they have declared theirs and which they consider occupied by Ukraine in their sick imagination. If they are successful in their offensive, then theoretically, as they plan, they will capture Zaporizhzhia, which will be a really big victory. If we compare the seizure of Zaporizhzhia and Soledar, the regional center and the village, which will be preferred... This is the only part of the front where they can try to achieve quick success, because they are failing near Bakhmut. Even after the fall of Soledar, our front did not collapse. The fighting continues, and our defense is strong enough. The situation is the same in other parts of the front. In the Zaporizhzhia direction, at least they have a target they can try to reach. It is very profitable for us to sit in defense and grind down Russian reserves day after day, week after week, month after month, as we are doing near Bakhmut. There, the Russians have suffered huge losses in equipment, people, and resources. If the trend continues, this is to be welcomed.

Ramstein's results

The meeting was more or less normal. We received high-quality, good equipment. Not tanks, but these armored vehicles, artillery shells, guns and missiles that we were promised and will probably receive soon are really powerful weapons that will be useful to us. Without it, it would be much harder for us. Tanks will come, and sooner or later we will get Leopard and Abrams. Of course, we would like this to happen as soon as possible so as not to delay their deployment into combat, but our allies are not ready to supply us with quality tanks in commercial quantities. If we are assessing the results of Ramstein, when we talk about armored vehicles, we should take into account that there are significant military assistance packages from the United States, which include 106 IFVs, if Bradley is combined with the previous package, and about 100 Striker APCs. If we are talking about the M113 APCs, these packages are clearly focused on the formation of fully combat-ready tactical groups. We say that up to three battalion tactical groups can be formed using Bradley and Marter heavy armored personnel carriers and Striker APCs. This quite pragmatic approach means that the dynamics in approaches to arms supplies are changing. This is a significant positive indicator of Ramstein. Moreover, afterwards, the US and Pentagon leaders said that Ukraine would receive all the equipment and weapons it needed to win on the battlefield. Ramstein also mentioned a significant package of artillery systems, which are also an important component of battalion groups that can be formed on the basis of these armored vehicles.

Reserve Colonel and expert at the Center for Defense Strategies Viktor Kevliuk believes that the meeting should be viewed as positive, as the receipt of 58 Bradley armored personnel carriers is an opportunity to rearm at least two mechanized battalions with modern combat vehicles that outweigh everything the enemy has on the battlefield. Receiving SAMs and ammunition is a very important progress. As for tanks, of course we always want more. Poland has already given us more than 250 T-72 tanks, which is 2.5 tank brigades, which is a lot.

The US advice to Ukraine not to hurry with the Armed Forces' offensive

Viktor Kevliuk tried to find the source of these statements. Apart from a high-ranking official from the White House, no other reports could be found. We can conclude that this recommendation is purely political. It is logical, because it means simultaneously receiving a large number of modern weapons that the Armed Forces did not have before. Secondly, the coordination of units. In addition to the Reuters article, there were others who also said that, given the burdensome and exhausting fighting around Bakhmut, it was necessary to plan combat operations more rationally. This was echoed at a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff, when it was first said that we should pay attention to the training of junior commanders. This is an important element of success on the battlefield. On the one hand, there are samples of weapons, of which there can be many, and on the other hand, the skills and interaction of the soldiers themselves on the battlefield. I think these indicators are also superimposed on the US desire to improve the training of personnel. The US and Poland are taking on an important burden when they train them. They promise to train the same tank brigade that Poland is going to give us, as well. When we talk about Leopard, Challenger, the training starts in the near future, so the reliance on trained personnel is also a force multiplier, which is extremely important for Ukraine's Armed Forces when the enemy uses numbers without seeking to improve the skills of personnel, but simply uses manpower. Instead of ramparts of fire, there are human ramparts, as we can see from the example of Bakhmut. That's why the American and British sides have repeatedly told us that if you try to outplay the Russian army in a linear way, that is, with the same number of tanks and artillery, it won't work, so you have to rely on asymmetric approaches. When we talk about asymmetric approaches to soldiers, it means improving their skills, and when we talk about artillery in particular, the Ramstein package included a lot of high-precision ammunition. That is, they allow us to destroy targets with less load consumption and provide higher efficiency on the battlefield. This time, we are talking about 400 Escalibur ammunition rounds, in a total package of 90,000 samples of other artillery shells of various calibers.

The role of artillery in war

By the way, about the artillery. Today, an artilleryman from Bakhmut said that the enemy is once again increasing the intensity of the use of artillery. In fact, they have concentrated all their capabilities on the Bakhmut direction and are bringing up the artillery again. When we talk about Ukrainian artillery, the total amount of ammunition fired by our NATO-standard artillery is about 100,000 per month. These indicators are in the range of 3,000-4,000 per day. This is less than the enemy's stockpile, although our military intelligence told us that sometime in March we should expect the enemy to start running out of ammunition and reach a rate of up to 10,000 rounds per day, but we have 3,000-4,000 today and the enemy has 10,000 in March, with a decrease from 20,000 to 10,000 rounds. We still see a certain disproportion. It is covered by the high-precision ammunition our artillery is using today. In any case, when we talk about an offensive, these high-precision indicators are important but not sufficient, because to prepare and conduct an offensive, we need armor and artillery to create our own firewall to destroy the enemy, in particular in the Zaporizhzhia direction, where the enemy has significantly strengthened its defenses, has provided a significant transfer of equipment and understands the risks that if it does not hold its southern front, the Russian group will be cut. Then the Russian forces will be in trouble because it will lose supplies from the Russian regions, which are now really saturating the south from Russia and Crimea.

Skibitskyi's interview on Russia's new offensive

By the way, yesterday there was an interesting interview with a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate, in which Skibitskyi assessed the prospects for Russian offensive actions in the near future. He said that the main activity of the Russian army, according to intelligence estimates, will be in two areas: first of all, Donetsk and Luhansk. This reflects the efforts and coincides with the realities that we are currently seeing on the battlefield. According to Skibitskyi, in February or March there will be fighting for the Luhansk region, which is happening now, and the enemy will try to take control of Kupiansk, Svatove, Kreminna in the direction of Kharkiv region. By the way, we have repeatedly described in our reviews what is happening in Svatove and Kreminna. Now, according to Ukrainian intelligence, the enemy will try to conduct such hostilities there to ensure both the preservation of defense and further advancement towards our defense, which actually looks unlikely, but intelligence estimates are exactly what they are. The intelligence also mentions that there will be active actions in the direction of Bakhmut and further from Soledar, but the Main Intelligence Directorate considers active hostilities in southern Ukraine unlikely, as well as an offensive from Belarus. In fact, this is a reflection of the enemy's real forces, which are sufficient for combat operations in only one operational area - Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which primarily support the political mission of the Russian military leadership to reach the borders of these regions. This is the main political task that General Gerasimov is already fulfilling directly. He is also beginning to implement Zhukov's practice, not counting the loss of personnel, but adopting the experience of the Wagner Group. There was another change in the Russian military leadership - the head of the Russian Airborne Forces. This caused surprise in the Russian community, because they believed that the current commander was an absolutely effective person, but we see that there was a clash between Gerasimov and the head of the Airborne Forces, because Gerasimov began to use paratroopers, as in the first stage of the war, for a conventional offensive. This was partially reflected in the fighting to capture Soledar, where Russian airborne units made active attempts to push through our defense, and partially succeeded. In any case, we can see that the dynamics associated with the priorities in determining the enemy's actions do not change: reaching the administrative border of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and when we talk about the south, the Zaporizhzhia direction, the attacks a day or two after the Russian platoon units tried to attack in the area of Orikhiv and Huliaipole, got kicked in the teeth and returned to their positions, can be considered as probing attacks to test the strength of our defense and create conditions to minimize the risks of Ukrainian offensive actions. But the question of when our offensive will take place remains the most difficult for our population and experts, because without effectively trained units and sufficient reserves, it would be premature to launch an offensive. We will see what happens with the supply of military aid, its assimilation and the creation of conditions for effective counteroffensive actions prepared by our General Staff.