Sunday 4 June 2023

Can Ukraine win without Abrams tanks and F-16s?

Ukranian officials are still saying they don't have enough weapons and ammunition to launch their counter-offensive against the Russians. Yet Zelensky said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine was now ready to go ahead. All very confusing unless it's part of a clever ploy to keep the Russians guessing. But the fact is Kyiv will never have everything they need to attack Russian troop positions in eastern and southern Ukraine and drive them back over the border, let alone seize back Crimea. For a start they still don't have US Abrams M1A1 tanks and won't get them for months, at least not for use in battle. There's lot of training to be done and explaining to do about using Abrams in manouevre warfare. And then there are the in-demand F-16s. They won't be ready to fly in action for months either. So the counter-offensive will have to make do without these two key weapon systems. What's more there isn't an inexhaustible supply of munitions, rockets, artillery shells, air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles provided by the UK etc etc. If the counter-offensive stalls through lack of ammunition that would be a huge blow to Ukraine and to its western partners. Putin will be hoping that that's what will happen: the counter-offensive will run out of steam. It does seem crazy that Ukraine is putting such huge effort into smashing into Russian defences and driving them back over the border when they don't have the best weapon systems to guarantee success. The Abrams tanks would definitely have made a difference. So too the F-16s.

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