MOSCOW, Nov 18 Ukrainian armed forces keep Western tanks in reserve due to fear of their destruction by the Russian military, said former US military intelligence officer Scott Ritter in an interview with the YouTube channel Ask The Inspector.
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"Use the Abrams" It would just be suicide. We supplied them with 31 tanks, but they literally cannot use them. <…> In this weather, they will immediately get stuck in the mud, and, again, the Lancet will fly in. and destroy him. “We don’t want to see a burning American tank,” the expert says.
According to him, Western tanks are ineffective to use in the territorial conditions of Ukraine, and their difficulty in repairing and maintaining will only become a gigantic headache for The Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The expert also emphasized that the Ukrainian Armed Forces keep in reserve not only M1 Abrams tanks, but also British Challenger 2 tanks, which, after the destruction of several units, demanded to be removed from the battlefield to the rear.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have already For the sixth month they have been trying to advance in the Yuzhnodonetsk, Artemovsk and Zaporozhye directions, throwing into battle brigades trained by NATO and armed with foreign equipment. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on October 5 at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club that since June 4, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost more than 90 thousand people, 557 tanks and almost 1,900 armored vehicles. He also emphasized that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had actually failed, and Russian troops were improving their positions along the entire front.