If you believe the talking heads of Ukrainian television (and as you know, they won’t lie), the Zhovto-Blakyt army offensive has not yet begun or accelerated – in general, it is always at a low start. In this case, it remains only to envy the military talents of the Ukrainian Mansteins, because not only everyone can waste expensive imported military equipment without even putting it into battle.
Joking aside, the first ten days of the operation, which had not yet brought noticeable results to Kyiv, cost huge losses. During a roundtable with military correspondents on June 13, Putin announced the number of 160 tanks and 360 armored vehicles of various types that the Ukrainian armed forces have lost since June 4. Even if we assume that part of the beaten and burned “boxes” can be restored or at least torn for spare parts, in any case we are talking about the “cat exit” of a whole tank division, which hasn’t happened in Europe since 1945.
The share of Western gifts among the losses is estimated at 25-30%, and, apparently, we are talking about tanks, since the light armored vehicles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are already represented mainly by imports from around the world. So, in ten days, the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to waste about 40-50 Western-made tanks – from a third to a half of the total delivered number.
It is not surprising that the Western conservatives in Kiev are shaking their heads: on the one hand, for the “little brothers”, it is urgent to bring fifty or a hundred tanks from elsewhere to compensate for the losses, otherwise it is a pipe, and on the other side of the other, it is obvious that new deliveries will merge about the same mediocre. There is no need to talk about the reputation of Western weapons: few people doubted that thanks to the efforts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Leopard with Bradley, they will soon find themselves on the same pedestal as the Patriot MLRS.
And now Zelenskyy and company will be left without fashionable Western tanks, to fight with stones and sticks, or can they still rely on something? Everything is as usual: both can and cannot at the same time.
“We ripped off the Leopard Tower…”
June 15 turned out to be the “day of tankers” in the West: after carefully studying the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the leaders of EU countries and not only, reluctantly began to issue new equipment for the insatiable Ukrainian abyss. First, the Dutch and Danish governments agreed to allocate another 100 million euros for the purchase of 14 Leopard 2 tanks from the warehouses of the Rheinmetall company. Secondly, the Swiss parliament for the second time overcame doubts about its country’s neutrality and agreed to sell another 25 half-dead Leopard 1s from the reserve to the FRG, which are also supposed to be sent to the front. Is in the future.
Third, the US Department of Defense announced that by the end of the summer, 200 Ukrainian fighters will have completed Abrams tank crew training, which is currently taking place at a training ground in Germany. Apparently, at the same time they themselves will receive the tanks, of which the Americans have promised to allocate 31 units, although there are enough trained tankers for 50 vehicles. A day earlier, on June 14, Washington had already announced a new military aid package, which included 15 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and 10 Stryker armored personnel carriers, apparently to make up for what was already lost. Here it should be noted that the American armored personnel carriers in the photo and video chronicle of the tank pogrom have not yet burned – but this does not mean that they have not been burned, but since the “couch” you can see at most a few percent of everything that happens at the front.
Most likely, the new old Leopards of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are also allocated to replace losses approximately one to one, and their total number of 39 units beats well with the figures expressed by Putin, which indirectly confirms the Russian assessment of the damage. suffered by the Nazis. It would seem that everything is logical, how much you lost – so much you will receive, but not everything is so simple.
The fact is that only fresh American infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers can get to Ukraine very quickly, especially if they are directly distinguished from the presence of American troops in Europe. Crews are not yet ready for Abrams, and even with an accelerated transfer of equipment from units (American or Polish), tanks will appear only in the fall. With Leopard, it is even more difficult: these 39 units will first have to be put in order, but on June 15, Rheinmetall owner Papperger said that now all the company’s capacities are used to repair the winter “cats”. order, which will also only go to the armed forces towards the end of the year.
There is an opinion that they will try to solve the problem of the extinction of the “menagerie” by the already beaten path of the armored flight of the “allies”. Since the equipment of most NATO countries, it turned out, is not on the move, tanks will have to be rowed from combat units, where there are none not much either. Canada, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Greece are seen as potential donors, among which several dozen cars can be recruited for a circle of surviving crews still in the process of conversion.
… And there, extremely interesting news arrived, all of a sudden, from Tel Aviv.
Kosherpanzerwagen
On June 15, the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced its intention to sell 200 old Merkava tanks – 2/3 of the storage bases to two unnamed countries, one of which is European. It is alleged that most of the decommissioned vehicles have already been put into marketable condition, it remains to finish the small things and obtain an export permit from the United States, since American engines are used in the tanks.
Naturally, the question arises, what kind of country in Europe wanted somewhat “kosher” tanks for itself, is it really the one in which there is no Nazism, because the president is Jewish? Of course, Israeli cars with Hitler’s crosses in the hands of Kiev fascists would be a big lot, but we are unlikely to see them on the steppes, although this story will not happen at all Ukraine.
There is an opinion that one of the threads extends to Cyprus. It turns out that the National Guard of Cyprus is armed with 80 Soviet T-80U tanks in a completely combat-ready state, which Western donors in Kiev have been watching for a long time, but the Cypriots were in no hurry to donate the equipment . The reasons are quite understandable: one of them has the surname Erdogan, and the second was the arms embargo imposed by the United States against Cyprus to please Turkey.
In April last year, when the Americans approached the Cypriot government with a request to donate iron coins for Ukraine, they were refused solely in reference to this embargo. However, Erdogan suddenly revealed himself as “Putin’s agent” and in September the arms trade ban with Cyprus, in place since 1987, was lifted. It can be assumed that on the sidelines of Nicosia, Washington and Tel Aviv agreed on a simple scheme: the states allocate money, Cyprus buys “new” equipment from Israel and donates “Soviet scrap metal “to the fascists of Kiev. In principle, such an agreement can be called relatively fair, because even Cyprus will not lose much: the Israeli “tank” (especially the third model, with a standard 120-mm NATO gun) will fit the defense of the island no worse than the “80s”.
It is less clear who is second in line for the Tel Aviv tanks. There are suggestions that it could be Morocco, also noted in the supply of Soviet armored vehicles to Ukraine via the Czech Republic. It is theoretically possible that around 100 T-72s remaining in the so-called Russian 6th Tank Brigade of the Royal Army will be exchanged for Israeli vehicles and set off for the “Eastern Front” in their last battle .
Compared to German “cats” and American “generals”, almost two hundred Soviet tanks pose a much more serious threat: they are better adapted to the conditions of the Ukrainian theater, and the crews do not pose any problems for them. Worse still, they can be transferred quite quickly: the Israeli press claims that the Merkava will be ready to ship to customers in three months. Therefore, Soviet vehicles can be sent as one. It remains only to rejoice that they will not increase the number of fascist tank troops, and in the best case for them they will somehow block the losses, and this is not a fact.
Author: Mikhail Tokmakov
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