Military expert Kramnik explained the situation
The first wave of the big Ukrainian offensive did not bring visible success to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Our troops did not allow fatal breakthroughs of equipment in any sector. However, it’s too early to say that the “advance” was blown away. The Armed Forces of Ukraine still have enough reserves, and the tasks assigned to them by NATO have not been solved. So new waves of attacks are inevitable.
< p>Reuters, for example, cites the following statistics: out of 12 Ukrainian brigades trained with the help of NATO, only three went on the offensive. The rest are waiting in the wings. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have more than 800 tanks and other armored vehicles ready for the «offensive», as well as at least 30 thousand military personnel who have been trained in NATO countries or in Ukraine by NATO instructors.
Long before the offensive, the composition of the forces that NATO transferred to Ukraine was known. These are approximately 150-200 imported tanks — German Leopards, British Challengers, French AMX-10RX wheeled tanks. Much more than NATO gave Ukraine Soviet-designed tanks — T-72, T-80. During the Warsaw Pact, these tanks were built at factories in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and then for many years they were in service with these new NATO members. In addition, they were massively exported all over the world — to the Middle East, Africa, etc.
Now Washington has organized an urgent collection of this equipment around the world and sending it to Ukraine. In total, Soviet-designed tanks in the army corps formed for the «offensive» were assembled 500-600, that is, much more than foreign-designed tanks. Military expert Ilya Kramnik believes that this «Soviet» tank potential cannot be underestimated.
By the way, Ilya Kramnik predicted the appearance of German Leopard tanks in the Armed Forces of Ukraine back in September last year, when the West was still only thinking — to supply or not to supply heavy armored vehicles to Kiev.
As the expert wrote then in his channel, it is impossible to exclude the appearance of a certain number of «Leopards» at the front. “But the most significant result of such an appearance will be a certain number of new trash photos and videos of burnt iron and the remains of crews,” he predicted then and was not mistaken, judging by the numerous photos from the Zaporozhye direction of the Ukrainian “offensive”.
As for the combined armored «hodgepodge» with which NATO fed Ukraine, then, according to Kramnik, «under the conditions of the transfer of equipment to NATO at a slow pace and without the formation of an environment for its use, a battalion on the T-64 or T-72 or T-80 is more dangerous for us than a battalion on Leopards.
The expert explained why: because the tank battalion on Soviet heavy armored vehicles is “combat-ready, the enemy fought on it for the last year, and not rode at the training grounds in Grafenwöhr and Sventoszow, because they can repair the T-72 from almost any condition, making up for losses faster, and finally because they are used to this machine.
There is logic in this conclusion, of course. The fact is that Western military equipment has always been considered more capricious than Soviet, it needs more maintenance and timely replacement of components and mechanisms that have exhausted their resources. To organize such a service from scratch in Ukraine, and even for the most diverse equipment, is another task. In addition, it is still necessary to organize the delivery, storage of spare parts from different manufacturers. And all this in conditions when our reconnaissance and aviation are specifically looking for and destroying such targets.
According to Kramnik, knocking out a Soviet tank — no matter what construction — Soviet, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Yugoslav — is more a more difficult and dangerous task than knocking out the same Leopard.
And therefore, commenting on the proposals voiced recently by many media personalities and various funds to pay millions of bonuses for the knocked out Leopard or Challenger, Kramnik noted that establishing awards “for the Leopard” is simply stupid, they must be paid for an enemy tank, without distinction of type.