UPDATE: Saturday, Jan 21, 2023 · 8:56:50 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
More reports that Russian forces have fled Kuzemivka without being able to regroup in the immediate area. We’ll see if this proves true beyond the day. If so, this town has been blocking the access to the road that leads into Svatove from the north, and there’s not another location along the route for 7km.
if Ukraine can actually push Russia back enough to keep Novoselivske off the firing line for a day or two, it could allow them to better secure the supply lines back to Kupyansk.
As the various foreign ministers and defense secretaries depart from the meeting at Ramstein, Ukraine is left with a long list of donated equipment to assist in its fight against an illegal and unprovoked Russian invasion. That list includes a single company (squadron, in Brit speak) of Challenger 2 tanks, along with the associated vehicles necessary to maintain them, fuel them, repair them in the field, and drag them home when damaged. Those 14 main battle tanks represent the erasing of yet another artificial barrier in getting Ukraine what it needs to actively push Russia off the remaining occupied territory. It’s the tip of the spear on a shopping list that includes some of the best military hardware in the world. However, at the end of the day, the equipment to be shipped following the meetings at Davos and Ramstein are simply not enough.
For the moment, multiple nations have agreed to train Ukrainian soldiers on the operation and maintenance of Leopard 2 tanks built by Germany, planning against the day when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz decides to either send tanks or release those nations which have purchased Leopard 2 tanks from Germany from the limitations of their export licenses. Polish officials continue to insist that they could send the tanks anyway, no matter what Germany says. They could. However, this is unlikely.
For now, the immediate task for Ukraine is looking at the list of what’s been promised, getting their forces up to speed on the support of this new hardware, and establishing both the structural and logistical chains needed to make it workable. But the failure of Western nations to step up and give Ukraine everything it needs and more, is greater than just another missed opportunity. It’s not just a failure that will be weighed out in Ukrainian blood, it represents give Russia and Vladimir Putin more time to plan, react, and to continue their terror campaign against civilians.
There is one more very important thing the U.S. could, and should, do right now.
Here’s one way of looking at the situation when it comes to providing one of the two major main battle tanks available to Western forces. (Note: The way that just about any image in Twitter related to Ukraine, even a map, ends up clamped behind a “sensitive” label, is maddening.)
The tweet above is only partially true. There are a 250 Abrams M1A2 SEPv3 already on their way to Poland, with the possibility of 250 more, though the facilities to handle these tanks are not currently in place. More to the point, there are hundreds of M1A2 Abrams currently to be found at the U.S. 7th Army Training Command in Grafenwöh, Germany. That facility not only includes everything needed to maintain the M1A2, but training people on its operation and maintenance is kind of what they do.
Should the U.S. decide to train Ukrainian forces on the Abrams, it wouldn’t require shipping people to Georgia. It could be done in Germany, This is likely to be at least one of the facilities where Ukrainian soldiers are sent to learn operation and maintenance for both the Bradley armored fighting vehicle and the Stryker armored vehicle (we still don’t know which of the ten different Stryker models Ukraine is to receive).
The U.S. has also indicated that it wants to train Ukrainian forces on large scale combined arms tactics, and is reportedly urging Ukraine to postpone any significant counteroffensive until new tools like the Bradley have been integrated and these new tactics have been absorbed.
Considering how many recent attempts to advance have involved small, localized assaults—by both Russia and Ukraine—resulting in high casualties and an inability to make a sustained breakthrough leading to significant movement, that’s probably good advice. Ukraine may have pushed Russia out of Novoselivske this week, and that’s fantastic. However, it’s taken that location back from Russia at least twice before, the first time all the way back in September. In November, the Ukrainian MOD even listed Novoselivske as an officially liberated location, only to have it fall back into Russian occupation by the end of the year. Expending ammunition, equipment, and most of all men, to take a position that can’t be exploited into a broader gain seems pretty pointless.
The largest gain made since mid-November likely was Russia’s capture of the area around Soledar, and that came only with a commitment to sacrifice as many troops as it took to garner something that looked like a victory, no matter how small. Ukraine shouldn’t feel the pressure to match this. We shouldn’t ask them too.
I want Svatove and Kreminna liberated. You want Svatove and Kreminna liberated. Ukraine really wants Svatove and Kreminna liberated. But it simply may not be worth the cost required to do so with the troops and equipment now on hand.
It’s understandable that Ukraine should feel incredible pressure to advance. Not only are they trying to push Russia off of Ukrainian territory and stop a cycle of death that includes regular bombardment of civilians, past experience has taught Ukraine that successful counteroffensives are necessary to generate support. Push Russia away from Kyiv, get a flood of outside assistance. Drive into Kharkiv, get more. Show the effective use of longer range weapons in forcing Russia to leave Kherson, get rewarded with more of the same.
If Ukraine is genuinely going to take a hold-ground stance through the remainder of the winter, and seek to make its next serious push only after it can field Bradleys and other new hardware like the French AMX-10rc, it has to know that the U.S. and other Western allies are not going to sit on their hands over the same period and cut back on the flow of weapons. If we want Ukraine to wait, they have to be rewarded for waiting. We should send them even more.
One way that the U.S. could show Ukraine that we remain committed is simple enough: Begin training Ukrainian forces now, not just in the maintenance, support, and operation of the Bradley and Stryker, and not just in how to integrate this hardware into larger combined arms operations. They should start training Ukrainian forces, right now, to prepare them to operate and maintain both the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, and the F-16 Falcon multirole aircraft.
That doesn’t mean sending these tanks and aircraft now. It means being prepared for the possibility that the Leopards will not be freed, and acknowledging the certainty that Ukraine will still need new aircraft if it’s actually going to practice combined arms in anything like the way the U.S. and other Western armies now believe is best practice. It means stopping a bad cycle where “it would take too long” becomes and excuse for not moving.
Get two dozen Ukrainian pilots training up on the F-16. Give a couple of hundred Ukrainian troops an intensive crash course in the operation and support of the M1A2. Maybe neither one ever enters Ukraine. But what this would do is break the cycle. Six months from now, we won’t be right back at square one, with people saying “but Ukraine doesn’t know how to...” They will know.
It gives options to not just Ukraine, but to the U.S. and other Western allies. It gives flexibility. And that has incredible value.
The memorial to those who lost their lives in that helicopter crash on the edge of Kyiv is bringing large crowds. Even in the midst of everything that has happened, Ukrainians have not lost their capacity to mourn, their empathy for those lost, or their sympathy for those who remain.
As good a statement of the starting conditions for any negotiations as I’ve seen.
Did I mention how maddening it is that people are abusing the “sensitive” flag on images in Twitter? It’s at the point where you can’t even meme.
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