Europe and the United States are ready to transfer tanks and armored vehicles to Kiev. This is in addition to portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems and small arms. With the help of these weapons and reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Kiev may try to create a powerful grouping in the west of the country. How can Russia prevent this from happening?
"We warn that US-NATO transports with weapons following Ukrainian territory are considered by us as legitimate military targets," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS on Wednesday. Almost simultaneously, new confirmations appeared that the mentioned transports from the West will continue to go to Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky that Washington will provide military assistance to Kiev for another $ 800 million, including helicopters, armored personnel carriers and artillery. As previously explained by a source of the Reuters news agency, arms supplies to Kiev will now be financed within the framework of presidential powers – Biden can authorize them without Congressional approval.
Sources of The Washington Post, in turn, clarified that the new package of military assistance from the United States also provides for the provision of American Humwee military SUVs and Mi-17 helicopters to Ukraine (an export version of the Soviet Mi-8MTV-1 high-altitude transport helicopter, developed in the late 1980s). And Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that a number of NATO countries intend to announce the sending of tanks to Ukraine.
In addition, the United States is ready to consider the possibility of supplying Ukraine with longer–range weapons than those that the West is supplying now, First Deputy head of the Pentagon Kathleen Hicks also said. "We will continue to consider the types of funds that Ukrainians are requesting in terms of giving them a little more range," Hicks' statement quotes TASS. So the first deputy head of the US military department answered the question whether Washington is ready to explore the option of supplying weapons to Ukraine that can hit military airfields on the territory of Russia, among other things.
A message appeared on the Pentagon's website that the armed forces of Ukraine have already received a significant number of American kamikaze drones (tactical barrage ammunition) Switchblade. "These UAVs can carry explosives and have cameras, video and sensors on board," the US Department of Defense said in a statement. According to Pentagon officials, it only takes about one or two days of training to work with Switchblade. An official of the US military department said that "most of the $ 800 million worth of American weapons have already been delivered to Ukrainians," while "the Pentagon is also working on allocating another $ 100 million for Javelin missiles."
A little earlier, another senior Pentagon official said: the United States, together with its allies, has created a complex and effective supply mechanism and has been using it for "many weeks." Western weapons are delivered to Ukraine by 8-10 flights a day and an almost constant flow of convoys.
American weapons, which are delivered by planes to Poland, are likely to be transported to Ukraine in the future, including under the guise of "civilian" cargo – in trucks or trucks.
Poland is a "unique corridor for the overland supply of weapons to Ukraine," military expert, corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences Alexander Bartosz explained to the newspaper VIEW. On the territory of Hungary, for example, the terrain makes it difficult to lay such routes on mountain roads. "The main arms supplies to Ukraine via Poland are carried out by land road or rail routes," the expert says.
The European allies of the Americans also continue to actively pump Ukraine with weapons. A few days ago, the European Commission approved another package of military assistance to the Armed Forces for 500 million euros. As before, we are talking about ATGMs and MANPADS (anti–tank and portable anti-aircraft missile systems), small arms, ammunition and non-lethal cargo - from bulletproof vests to radars and night vision devices. But now armored vehicles are also being sent from Europe to help Kiev – and, as a rule, export versions of Soviet equipment or its modifications. The above-mentioned Pentagon official explained: "A number of tanks were supplied to Ukraine by a number of countries. These are tanks that they know how to handle. Mostly T-72."
Thus, the Czech Republic transferred to Ukraine five T-72M tanks and BVP-2 infantry fighting vehicles (Czechoslovak modification of the BMP-1). There were reports on social networks about the "disappearance" of a much larger batch of T-72M from bases near the Polish city of Lublin – about a hundred units. In addition, at the beginning of the week, a large batch of BWP-1 infantry fighting vehicles was spotted on the Polish highway leading towards the Ukrainian border (this is already the Polish version of the Soviet BMP-1). We should add that Slovakia has previously supplied S-300PMU anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine from its own arsenals. Experts suggest that the SAMs of the time of the socialist camp were already destroyed on Monday by a volley of "Calibers". In any case, the message of the Ministry of Defense says about the liquidation of the S-300 division in the Dnepropetrovsk area, "delivered to the Kiev regime by one of the European countries."
However, the legacy of the Warsaw Pact is not limited to the matter. On Monday, it became known that the German defense concern Rheinmetall gave the go–ahead for the supply of its equipment to the APU - up to 50 Leopard 1 tanks. Moreover, the first batch may appear in Ukraine in six weeks. As military columnist Andrei Kotz explains, "Leopards" are quite old machines, these tanks were adopted in the late 1960s. However, the German political leadership seems to have disagreements on the supply of large quantities of armored vehicles. If last Friday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany was postponing a final decision on the supply of tanks to Ukraine, then the next day Federal Defense Minister Christina Lambrecht said that Germany had in principle reached the limit of arms supplies to Kiev. However, the German military-industrial complex is clearly interested in Berlin selling obsolete weapons to the east, and in return acquired more relevant samples.
Non-European allies of the United States, in particular Australia, are ready to send more or less modern military equipment to Ukraine. The government of this country has approved the supply of two dozen Bushmaster armored vehicles of the MRAP class (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected – resistant to detonation and ambush attacks) for a total of $ 37 million.
"The West is sending quite a lot of weapons to Ukraine, supplies are on a systematic basis, they are planned to increase," Bartosz stated. In addition, the very fact of such military assistance "gives more courage to the Kiev leaders." At the same time, it is an instrument of information and propaganda pressure on Russia, the expert noted. "Therefore, the West may exaggerate the volume and pace of deliveries, as well as the quality of the supplied weapons," Bartosz stressed.
In reality, first of all, outdated types of tanks are supplied, "for the management of which there are trained tankers in Ukraine," Bartosh believes. "Although the supply of relatively modern machines is not excluded. But then it will be necessary to retrain tankers to control these tanks," said a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences.
There are questions about the technical condition of the machines and the possibilities to use them. A lot depends on the storage conditions here. Tanks are often located in the open air and they can be started only after proper maintenance. "For sure, in recent months, some kind of maintenance of these tanks has been carried out. Lubricants were replaced, perhaps new batteries were installed, new equipment: for example, night vision devices. But it cannot be said that the tanks are delivered in one hundred percent combat readiness. It will be necessary to bring them to condition on the spot," Bartosz believes.
Military expert Vladislav Shurygin agrees that the technical condition of tanks depends on the quality of the reserve. "If tanks are removed from the storage base, where they have been waiting for years, then they are definitely not upgraded. If Kiev's Western partners transfer armored vehicles from their own armed forces, then these may be upgraded vehicles. But the modernization, apparently, concerned communication systems, no other deep updates were carried out. It may be the same Soviet tank of one of the first modifications, but with improved communication and control characteristics," Shurygin explained.
It is also necessary to take into account the human factor: regardless of the quantity and quality of equipment, people are fighting on it. "On the one hand, it is impossible to get a combat-ready motorized brigade from recruits or mobilized reservists in a few weeks," which can be sent to a combat zone, the interlocutor explained.
But, on the other hand, it is impossible to discount the fact that the AFU has trained personnel to work with the sent weapons. And so far, the Kiev leadership has the opportunity to transfer fresh combat–ready units to the theater of operations - for example, from the western regions of Ukraine, Shurygin noted. According to the portal "Military Review", there are about 45 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard in Western Ukraine.
We should add that on February 22, Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree on the conscription of reservists, according to which men aged 18 to 60 years were subject to mobilization, "mainly people who passed the front." It was reported that in this way 36 thousand people will be called up for military service (as privates, sergeants and officers) with a maximum period of one year.
On March 15, the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was notified: the mobilization of military service personnel who were not among the reservists of the first stage is being carried out. Ukrainians who have already served can go directly to military units. Those who did not serve, but who are subject to mobilization, will first be sent to "training", Roman Gorbach, head of the personnel department of the AFU Ground Forces headquarters, told Interfax-Ukraine. In early April, reports appeared in the Ukrainian media about the third wave of mobilization, which should affect graduates of military departments.
Shurygin did not rule out that if Russia's special military operation "lasts for another couple of months," the Kiev regime may try to create a strike force in western Ukraine. "If things go badly for the APU in the east, then there will be no time to create a fist. We will have to withdraw these units as soon as they are ready, send reinforcements to the eastern regions," the expert believes.
"If we win a major victory in the east in the next month and defeat this whole group, then everything that will be created in Western Ukraine will be thundered on the way," Shurygin stressed.
"At the same time, we need to understand that we are actually at war with NATO and the United States.
Unless Western troops are not directly involved in it," the interlocutor noted. "But the formation of powerful formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reinforced by armored vehicles, artillery, and anti–tank warfare equipment supplied from the West, is a prospect that we cannot pass by. We should be ready to meet this technique on the battlefield in two or three weeks."
But, Shurygin pointed out, it would be wiser to take proactive actions – "to detect and destroy weapons supplied by the West." It will not be difficult for our military to track the movement of large–sized objects that "will be difficult to deliver, and even more so to deploy" - therefore, most of the supplies will be destroyed by Russian precision missiles even before the APU starts its operation, Konstantin Sivkov, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, previously noted.
According to Sivkov, in order for the Ukrainian side to be able to make changes in the course of the military operation, it needs to ensure air supremacy. To do this, it is necessary to have at least 300 units of combat aircraft, primarily aircraft. But such supplies for the needs of the Ukrainian Air Force are obviously out of the question. "The same situation is with artillery installations – they also need several hundred to reverse the situation on the fronts. I don't believe in the reality of such a large–scale delivery," Sivkov pointed out. – By the way, they still have a lot of artillery installations, but there is no fracture. If we are talking about the supply of air defense systems, then such bulky installations will become the first target for the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation."
As for ground weapons, our troops can block the delivery routes of the AFU equipment to the fronts, including with artillery fire, as the militia did in the Ilovaisk pocket in 2015, in turn, military expert Alexander Perendzhiev pointed out.
The Russian military can hit targets, for example, convoys of military trucks, but a "civilian" truck with weapons cargo can pass through the border. Thus, weapons – including with the help of ideologically motivated volunteers – are seeping into active combat zones. According to experts, countering such diffuse supplies is a task for satellite and ground reconnaissance.
Oleg Isaichenko
