Russian attack | WSJ: Ukraine received hundreds of tanks as spoils of war from Russia

Foreign countries|Russian invasion

from Russia has become the largest single external source of military equipment for the Ukrainian army, estimates the US magazine The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Ukraine’s counterattack has progressed rapidly in the last month. Russia left behind significant amounts of military equipment when it retreated at lightning speed in the Kharkiv area.

“Russia no longer has weapons superiority,” says the chief of staff of the Ukrainian army’s artillery battalion fighting on the Kharkiv front, according to the WSJ.

“We crushed all their artillery units before launching the attack. Then we started moving so fast that they didn’t even have time to refuel and load their tanks. They just ran away and left everything behind.”

of the WSJ according to estimates collected from open source intelligence websites, Ukraine would have seized, among other things, hundreds of tanks and a significant number of tank howitzers from the Russian forces. According to the Dutch site Oryx, which lists equipment losses, Ukraine would have captured a total of almost 900 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles from Russia. Some of them were already occupied by Ukraine after Russia withdrew from the Kyiv region in the spring.

In addition to the heavy equipment, Russia has abandoned several of its weapon stockpiles, from which the Ukrainian army has been able to supplement its own ammunition stockpile according to Soviet standards, which ran low already in the spring.

In recent months, Ukraine has learned to use weapons according to NATO standards with the help of arms from its allies. Colonel of the Ukrainian army Serhi Cherevatyin according to it, it is not difficult for the Ukrainians to reuse the Russian weapons they have acquired.

“They are the Soviet school that is easy for us to understand. If our army has learned how to use Panzerhaubitz, Krabs and American Paladins, we will have no problem controlling Russian systems similar to ours,” Cherevatyi told the WSJ, referring to German, Polish and US tank howitzers.

Ukrainian the army has put some of the captured equipment into use as such, immediately after replacing the Russian army’s Z insignia with Ukrainian insignia. It has either repaired the damaged equipment to useable condition or disassembled it into spare parts.

One Ukrainian battalion, the Karpatian Siš, captured its deputy chief of staff Ruslan Andriykon along with ten tanks and five tank howitzers after the retreat of the Russian troops from the city of Izjum.

“We started as an infantry battalion, and now we’re kind of becoming a mechanized battalion,” Andriyko said, according to the WSJ.

The battalion has also transferred the equipment it captured to other departments of the army. The use of captured weapons also raises the fighting spirit of Ukrainian fighters.

Ukrainian army troops examine a T-90A tank abandoned by Russia in the Kharkiv region on September 30.

by Jakub Janovskywhich lists equipment losses for Oryx, says that some of the equipment captured by the Ukrainian army is modern, some “belongs to museums.”

Economic magazine Forbes according to Tuesday, Ukraine had received as spoils of war at least nine Russian T-62 tanks, which Russia put into service in the 1960s. Russia had already stopped using T-62 tanks once in the 2010s due to their obsolescence, but brought them back to the battlefield after losing hundreds of tanks already in the spring.

According to the magazine, the Ukrainian army is also skilled in modifying old and non-standard equipment for combat use.

At the moment, Ukraine is also advancing rapidly in the Kherson region. In days, it has pushed the front line tens of kilometers and liberated several areas.

Correction 6.10. 11:31 a.m.: Open source sites corrected to open source intelligence sites.

Correction 6.10. 2:44 p.m.: In the photo of the article, the woman is cycling past a T80 tank, not a T72 tank, as was previously erroneously stated in the caption.