On January 11th, 2023 the city of Soledar, situated to 50 kilometers to the North of the strategically valuable region of Bakhmut in Donetsk, fell to Russian forces, the primary thrust for which Russia’s private military company, the Wagner Group advanced. Bakhmut
In response to the city’s fall and subsequent exposure of Bakhmut to siege, the United Kingdom, aligned with the United States and NATO against Russia, has ramped up its push for the delivery of heavy weapons, anti-missile defense systems, and so-called Main Battle Tanks (henceforth MBT).
The confirmation of the UK’s delivery of 10 challenger tanks represents a major escalation in the Ukraine war, solidifying the UK’s direct involvement in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
With permission from Germany but under pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom, Poland agreed to send Ukraine hundreds of Germany’s most numerous tanks, the Leopard II.
During a visit to Lviv in western Ukraine on January 11th, Polish president Andrzej Duda announced Poland would donate a company of Leopard II tanks to Ukraine. A company might include a dozen or 14 vehicles.
Spain, Poland, Greece, Denmark and Finland currently own, operate, and maintain the over 2000 Leopard II tanks manufactured thus far. These countries may agree to ship these tanks in a further escalation of the Ukraine war.
In response to the United Kingdom’s decision to deliver the tanks, the news agency, Maariv, reported the Kremlin cautioning that “the tanks Britain plans to send to Ukraine will go up in flames on the battlefields,” and warned the West that supplying Ukraine with a new round of weapons could change the outcome of the war. [1]
Last year NATO countries came together to source the delivery of Soviet manufactured T-72s and M-55S tanks. M-55 tanks are modernized T-55 that the Slovenian army paid Israeli firm Elbit and STO RAVNE in Slovenia to modify. Slovenia exchanged more than 28 M-55Ss to Ukraine for 40 military trucks from Germany, an amount more than sufficient for a battalion.
The results of the Ukrainian armed forces’ exploitation of these tanks on the battlefields of the Donbas and the greater Crimea peninsula are still a subject study. An unmentioned fact of the Kharkiv counteroffensive, which Kiev launched in September with enormous success in the requisition of lost territory, is that Russia’s elite Moscow guards suffered an incalculable loss in its aftermath.
Russia’s 200th Motor Rifle Brigade, one of the most elite Moscow guards in the Russian armed forces, saw its unit suffer heavy depletion as a result of Ukraine’s September counteroffensive.
In addition to Russia’s 200th Motor Rifle Brigade, the reconnaissance company of the GRU’s 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade experienced substantial causalities in defense of Lyman, which fell to Ukrainian armed forces during its Blitzkrieg tactical counteroffensives in September.
It is unclear, however, whether the upgraded T-72s or M55S tanks played a major role in the decimation of Russia’s elite fighting forces in Kharkiv or Lyman. What is for certain is that in the absence of the Western supply of tanks, armored vehicles, heavy weapons, anti-missile defense systems or munitions, Kiev’s Ukrainian armed forces would continue to collapse.
The fact that Ukraine’s Blitzkrieg tactical counteroffensives in September ran asunder shortly after seizing territory in both Lyman and Kharkiv in what is clearly a rout indicates that Ukraine’s armed force are incapable of continuously advance its forward operability as a military force. The fall of Soledar is further proof.
Eye witness reports from the soldiers in Bakhmut and those who fought to defense the city of Soledar form the Wagner Group’s advances report that the Russians were sending waves of troops into the cities. In a news interview with France 24, for instance, a Ukrainian solider explained how, “Russians keep coming.”
Since Kiev’s Ukrainian armed forces are dependent upon Western nations, NATO allies, the United States or the United Kingdom for its sustained combat readiness, there is no reason to suspect that Ukraine is capable of launching a major repellant counteroffensive to obliterate the Russian armed forces’ defensive lines in the Donbas and the Crimea Peninsula, even if, as the rumor has it, the Ukrainians, nonetheless, plan to launch a Spring counteroffensive at the end of winter.
War is logistics. Without logistics, a steady, continuous, uninterrupted flow of the military machinery, fuel or munitions does not supply an army, let alone a military in a state of utter forward operability. The requirement to reload tank barrels with different rounds, refuel with different fuel, or repair with unmanufactured foreign parts strains the steady, uninterrupted flow of the military machinery, fuel or munitions that a nation serves from its underbelly. Kiev’s underbelly is eviscerated and disemboweled.
As Kiev’s economy continues to collapse, Kiev’s military continues to stall, fall back or lose, the more pressing the United States, the United Kingdom or NATO allies view the need to escalate the war with the supply of ever greater, newer, and more powerful weapons. Not a single weapon, yet, however, has played a decisive role on the battlefield, and now, as ever before, the continuing collapse of Kiev’s Ukrainian armed forces portends the entrance of one or more of these countries directly into the fighting against Russia.
[1] – [“”הטנקים שלכם יישרפו בשדה הקרב”: רוסיה במסר לוחמני לבריטניה”; maariv.co.il, January 16th, 2023]