In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes

[Zorro]

A three-week fight in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine — Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.

The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor.

“We say, ‘Please, don’t let us down in battle,’” said Sgt. Artyom Knignitsky, the mechanic. “‘Bring us in and bring us out.’”

Their respect for their tank is understandable. Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of war more than the main battle tank. Tanks have loomed over the conflict in Ukraine in recent months — militarily and diplomatically — as both sides prepared for offensives. Russia pulled reserves of tanks from Cold War-era storage, and Ukraine prodded Western governments to supply American Abrams and German Leopard 2 tanks.

The sophisticated Western tanks are expected on the battlefield in the next several months. The new Russian armor turned up earlier — and in its first wide-scale deployment was decimated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/world/europe/ukraine-russia-tanks.html?unlocked_article_code=CbUJzXUK7hN5IZxP78by7x7--FQF8JPxMPa7ZyL_sl49Y9kF5uS1cSv7KhvadbamyCXyKuaW3TbbD4g9HWBDxx6ZbXlsD54UHrMM35aTAK38Ifd53-9Yj3SJKK4-ZMrtkP1zZD_ZnOaHkIM_QglTLl0WkJhNJsSKir-lLTP-fojLRO_7DtLt3_9GPXR644lFPUS4ygqNpa0vGhCREhCItEviz4EMO9nksCgX-W7AVxLcantk40xcpYYiE0Ku-LMUD73f7tjLNz8wRNkeKVsU4JWhljhs1alQW4cwq3FdlD7EbZAWWC4WWjfRvQAeG1RcgK13B44hmNDBdJx9HATdc7k4_Q&smid=url-share

[underpants]

1. Excellent read.

I was in a Bradley but there’s always a strong relationship between a crew and it’s track.

[2naSalit]

2. Thanks...

That was very interesting.

Best line is the last one... “What they did wrong was come to Ukraine.”

[WarGamer]

3. Cool story...

But it's hard to trust news stories from either Ukrainian or Russian sources.

The NYT based that story exclusively on interviews with Ukrainians.

Don't US News agencies have reporters on the ground with battle units?

Having said that... all of a sudden, it's 1944 all over again.

Tanks are right up there with Battleships on the obsolescence scale.

Tanks are USELESS at the tip of the spear if they're unaccompanied by fast ground elements... AKA motorized infantry.

Happened in WW2.

From memory, during the Battle of Berlin in WW2... a group of French Volunteers fighting for the SS Charlemagne Division holed up inside the Neukolln Rathaus (City Hall) and fired handheld Panzerfaust weapons as Russian tanks flooded the street towards the City Center. IIRC the French soldiers stacked up 20, 30 tanks there in the street before they withdrew into City Center.

In fact, one of these soldiers, Henry Fenet was one of the war's final Knights Cross award winners. I think he actually received the award underground in the subways just hours before the war ended.

[Omnipresent]

4. I feel sorry for those poor, young Russian men, about to die.

They really don’t want to do Putin’s bidding, but no one in Russia can get close enough to that lunatic to neutralize him.

[wnylib]

6. I sometimes feel bad for the Russian conscripts and

especially for the prisoners being forced to fight in Ukraine. Russia uses them as fodder, pushing them to the front, knowing that large numbers will die, but expecting to make slow progress through the ones who do survive to get into Ukrainian territory. Such clumsy, crude methods, sacrificing hundreds or thousands instead of using intelligent, strategic methods.

OTOH, I'm happy for Ukrainians that Russians are not using intelligent strategies.

Still, such horrible loss of life over one SOB's ego is appalling. And it's hard to feel much pity for the Russians as a group considering what so many of them do to Ukrainian civilians when they occupy an area. So, I am happy for the Ukrainian successes, tactics, and weapons. I feel sorrow for what the Ukrainians have suffered and continue to suffer in this senseless, needless war. The best way to end it is to win and drive the Russians out. That means, of course, killing more and more Russians.
As the last line says, "Their mistake was in coming here."
Russia brought this on themselves.

[Igel]

7. I want to.

Really, I do.

But they had a choice. Not all choices are good, but we *always* have a choice.

The Russian conscripts could get together. Vanish. Go underground. If there was a Black Orchestra that tried numerous times in Nazi Germany, Xians all, to kill or stop Hitler or seriously disrupt, there could be a Russian Orchestra. The Black Orchestra failed, was mostly annihilated, but managed to provide enough disinformation to bend the war in ways that helped the Allies--and in some cases were thwarted by events, not by Hitler's version of the FSB or GU or even Stalin's self-serving stoolie proletariat. If the "Russian Orchestra" failed and they died, you know, sure, they're dead.

But dead trying to do what's right versus dead out of cowardice with the agreement to kill the oppressed is still, you know, dead.

They've chosen--because they *had* a choice, just not a good choice--to do what's convenient and less short-term painful. That it led to long-term death, their choice.

They chose to die killing oppressed and vulnerable, not trying to take out or disrupt oppressors and the arrogantly authoritarian.

At least those who headed for the border simply chose a cowardly choice with a strong downside, not a convenient choice that entailed evil.

[wnylib]

10. I wonder how much of a choice the conscripts

do have. To make a choice, you need information, which they are not getting. They are being told that Ukraine represents a threat to Russian autonomy because, as the Russian line goes, the West is using Ukraine to threaten Russian borders. If that's what conscripts hear, then they might believe that they are heroically defending their homeland. In that case, they are not making a free, informed choice.

However, when they are in the field being ordered to kill civilians or take them as prisoners, or bomb civilian targets, the decision becomes more difficult. If they refuse, they will be killed. If they don't refuse, they are committing war crimes. I wonder if some would choose to surrender to Ukraine rather than carry such orders.

Then there are the ones who commit crimes against humanity without being ordered to. No sympathy for them at all. They don't deserve it. But that's what is so awful about war. When people are in a setting like war where social order is broken down and your job is killing, it is all too easy for people to turn feral and ugly in their dealings with other people. That's not an excuse. Not everyone gives in to the baser side of human nature in such circumstances. But it is all too common in war.

So people have choices or decisions to make about how they act during war. But they might not have correct information about whether to go to war in the first place or resist it by fleeing their country.

[Warpy]

5. Russians don't properly coordinate tanks and infantry

In addition, they've been doing the same thing over and over again in trying to storm Vuhledar and expecting a different outcome. Their tanks roar along the road, the Ukrainians open fire with artillery, their tanks leave the road and are quickly blown to bits by antitank mines in the fields. Lather, rinse, repeat. All the fields around Vuhledar are so heavily mined that the tanks can't get near enough to fire. Soon it will be so muddy that if they leave the road, they'll just get stuck if they don't blow up first.

Russia is only producing about 20 new tanks a month and they're losing 10 times that many. It's why they're retrofitting Cold War tanks with infrared sights and sending them to the front. Most are rust buckets that barely run.

[Ligyron]

8. Thank you for making this NY Times article available, Zorro!

Some of us just can't afford a subscription and are frustrated when people OP in reference to an article that can't be read.

To be clear, not frustrated at any OP's, just at my economic situation and only seeing 3 articles a month.

[tazkcmo]

9. Thank you for the article.

Very nice of you.

[lpbk2713]

11. Heathen war criminals reciting the Lord's Prayer.

That would be a sight to behold.