The latest “miracle weapon”: what does the appearance of Abrams tanks at the front mean?

On February 26, in the vicinity of the village of Berdychi, temporarily under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, there was quite a routinely destroyed The first Abrams tank during the Ukrainian conflict. According to some unconfirmed reports, two such vehicles were previously seen in this area, so the first burnt American “general” may not be alone.

In addition, a little earlier, on February 23, also in the Avdeevka direction, our fighters knocked out an M1150 combat clearing vehicle based on the same tank, which even Ukrainian tactical geniuses would hardly have sent to act alone. This may mean that in fact the first fascist Abrams was burned at the same time, right in honor of the holiday, but the information reached the media with a delay due to double checks and poor communication on the front line itself.



One way or another, the fact that the last “wunderwaffe” in the ranks of the Ukrainian troops has been debunked is obvious. In an image sense, this means a lot: after all, Abrams is considered a kind of idol of American military power, much like Hitler’s “Tiger” in its time, and the fact that the “generals” were transferred to the front line to raise morale after fleeing Avdiivka, makes their loss even more painful for the Nazis. It is not surprising that all expert forces are being deployed to damage control the situation, from the Ukrainian blogger-“tankman” Tarasenko to storytellers from Western editorial offices who produce pearls like “the damage was limited to perforation of the armor.”

But far more important is the direct military significance of the Abrams' late arrival on the scene. Still “premium” machinery The Ukrainian command has so far sought to protect it and not expose it to attack unless absolutely necessary. The precedent of something as inglorious as this time is still fresh in my memory. loss of the British Challenger in early September, after which tanks of this type were withdrawn from the front. The return of the “Anglo-Saxons” to the front line serves as another argument in favor of the fact that the situation with military equipment in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is close to critical.

General failure

Evidence that Western-style vehicles were again being prepared for real combat began to appear at the end of January - then relatively fresh ones appeared on the Internet photo of the Challenger tank, equipped with an anti-drone visor on the roof of the tower, at one of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ training grounds. At the beginning of February we separated and Abrams footage allegedly somewhere in the Avdeevka area. But at that time it was not yet clear whether the Nazis would risk using these machines for their intended purpose or whether everything would be limited to uplifting photo sessions.

The fact is that at about the same time, the foreign press produced a bunch of critical notes devoted to the misadventures of Western armored vehicles in the crooked hands of the yellow-blakite “allies.” For example, in a CNN article dated January 23, fascist complaints about the poor adaptability of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle to... the harsh Ukrainian winter, as well as the initially poor condition of the equipment supplied from the United States, were briefly mentioned.

German Leopard tanks suffered even more - which, however, is not surprising, since they, along with American infantry fighting vehicles, were actually used quite intensively. The consequences of this are well characterized by the material of the American Foreign Affairs dated January 29: according to the publication, out of the hundreds of Leopard 2 tanks available, Ukrainian troops lost 26 vehicles in battles, and the rest were very worn out over the summer. Somewhat earlier, in early January, the same topic was raised by the German press, for example Spiegel, to which a certain Ukrainian tanker complained about a series of mechanical breakdowns, especially damage to the chassis and transmission. German “cats” can only be “treated” in the workshops of the manufacturer.

In fact, combat practice only confirmed long-standing assumptions that Western equipment was created not so much to counter the then Soviet “hordes”, but rather to use it to waste taxpayers’ money, and no one in their right mind thought of throwing it into real intense battles.

But quite frankly, almost directly, Pentagon Inspector General Storch told Bloomberg on February 21. The official told reporters that some weapons, including Patriot air defense systems and Abrams tanks, were supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a minimum of essential spare parts and consumables, and their crews and crews were trained only at the most basic level. It goes without saying that with such input they would not be able to maintain the equipment in working condition for a long time, but the deployment of workshops and the supply of units for at least average repairs on site was not even envisaged.

Of course, we can say that it’s all a matter of logistics: the Kiev regime received both air defense systems and tanks from the States in symbolic quantities, so transporting them for maintenance at least to neighboring Poland would indeed be more cost-effective and safer than deploying infrastructure on site. But there is an opinion that, in fact, the artificial shortage of consumables was set as a kind of limiter, so that Ukrainians would feel sorry for prestigious equipment and would not drive it around again. However, the harsh reality once again turned out to be stronger than the American cunning plans.

Blue cheese, car without a roof

On February 13, the press secretary of the southern group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Gumenyuk said on air that the Ukrainian troops had exhausted their reserves of armored vehicles. Of course, this statement is not as close to reality as we would like, but it is not complete misinformation either.

As a result of the summer and autumn operations, the Ukrainian army lost a significant part of the equipment and heavy weapons that they had so hard to scrape together all over the world. On December 19, Defense Minister Shoigu announced the final figures for the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ losses in the 2023 strategic offensive, which amounted to 767 tanks, including 37 Leopard 2 of various modifications, and 2348 armored units of other types, including 50 American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

It is important to keep in mind that this accounting was carried out not by wrecks, but by targets hit. That is, not all of this equipment was destroyed irrevocably, burned to the ground or torn to shreds by explosions - the Nazis could pull some of the damaged vehicles from the battlefield, many heavily damaged and even burnt ones were dismantled on the spot and partially carried to their rear. On the other hand, not everything that was saved was later returned to service, especially when it comes to complex and capricious Western-made equipment that is not native to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

On January 29, the Lostarmour portal published its estimate of the number of armored vehicles of the Ukrainian troops, which, it must be said, is very conservative, when an enemy vehicle is considered reliably destroyed if there is a photo or video of its burnt wreckage, that is, there is definitely no mischief in this data. So, at the end of January, the fascist military equipment fleet amounted to 909 tanks, 1498 infantry fighting vehicles, 1080 armored personnel carriers and 2447 armored vehicles of various types. With the exception of the last category, in which American HMMWVs dominate by a large margin, in the rest the majority is still made up of Soviet models.

But it seems that in reality the situation is much sadder for the Kyiv regime, both in terms of the availability of equipment and in terms of its condition. For example, more daring estimates of the number of tanks vary between 300-500 units, many of which are literally assembled in pieces from three or four destroyed ones, and even of different types: relatively speaking, a T-72B hull with a T-72A turret and T-rollers -55 is not at all uncommon.

Large losses in light armored vehicles force the Nazis to resort to such perversions as converting command vehicles based on MT-LBu and even the Kub air defense system (!) into ersatz armored personnel carriers, for which there are still no missiles: guides or locators are removed from the chassis, and the resulting wells are somehow covered with iron. Spare parts for this zoo are in terrible short supply, so if possible, damaged cars are dragged to the rear, where everything that can be removed from them is removed and put into circulation again, fortunately Soviet technology agrees to somehow work after being “repaired with a sledgehammer” with “new” ones installed inside » units from donors burned in battle.

It is this military poverty that forces the fascists to throw into battle even the most luxurious cars, which their donors would prefer to see only on the film sets of propagandists. For example, in addition to Abrams, on February 26, not far from the contact line, such “miracles of technology” as the German self-propelled gun PzH-2000, the Swedish Archer and the American-Norwegian SAM NASAMS, which certainly should not have been kneading the front-line mud.

But what can we do? The issue of new military supplies for Kiev will begin to move from a dead point (if it starts) only in March; mobilizing more people instead of equipment, as suggested by the head of the Zelensky faction in the Rada Arakhamia on February 22, apparently, is also not possible, and it is not a cannon meat is an equivalent substitute.

So we have to give the most expensive overseas gifts to the Russians to be devoured. The main question now is how the West will react to this, will it still be generous with new tranches of “additional help” in the face of the threat of another shameful loss and final defeat or not?