From our correspondent
BAKHMUT FRONT – Two days ago, a Russian Lancet drone peered out of the gray clouds and fired two missiles that aimed at the iron piles that its sensors had identified cloaked in the rows of trees lining abandoned fields. “These were precise shots, they just missed us by a hair, the shrapnel could have caused serious damage,” says Yura Damianek, who is 27 and has commanded one of the old Russian T-72s since the end of February 2022. They still form Ukrainian battleships , including the 10th Armored Brigade, the bulk of the units.
The holes in the tower
Yura shows the barrel of the cannon near the turret, touches two or three holes with his palm and smiles. “No problem, we used it a few hours ago in the sector entrusted to us here north of Bakhmut and it fired like new,” he says. But Damianek and his tankmen have completely different thoughts: after a nine-month siege, the city, which has become the symbol of the Donbass tug-of-war, seems about to fall. “It is true what the media say, citing NATO intelligence, the Russians have advanced sharply in the center of Bakhmut in recent days and our supply routes have become more fragile. But the general staff knows. We believe he will continue to urge soldiers to remain in the western city area to eliminate the maximum number of Russian soldiers and keep their attention focused while we prepare our next offensive. However, if it becomes too difficult and our men risk being surrounded, they will be ordered to retreat».
World War I and future conflicts
Listening to them, the words of a team of Anglo-American experts, who met in Kiev a few days ago, come to mind and draw the parallels that we journalists draw between the trenches marking the positions in Donbass and those on the Donbass battlefields are certainly reminiscent of World War I, but do not reflect the essence of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. “This is already the war of the future, consisting of drones and satellite communications, characterized by the speed of innovation and certainly not by the slowness of the trenches. A century ago, armies moved like ancient giants, but here everything is fast, constantly evolving, as if it were an open-air laboratory. Both sides examine each other and constantly adapt and reinvent their respective strategies. Until recently, our NATO military academies modeled themselves on the Yom Kippur War waged by Arabs and Israelis in 1973. From now on he will be the Russian-Ukrainian one and will rule the law,” argued Hew Strachan of Saint Andrews, et al. University. And indeed, the tank crews of the Tenth Brigade do not move their tracks without their drones, guided by the Starlink-guaranteed satellite links and to signal enemy units and their movements.”We have tanks, but we almost never engage in direct collisions with enemy tanks. The Russians generally use their tanks as self-propelled guns, burying them in the ground or protecting them with logs and concrete. The most effective weapons that we use in both armies are the missile-equipped drones and anti-tank missiles that are put at the disposal of the infantry».
Wounded by a patrol
Damianek himself was seriously wounded last year in the countryside east of Bakhmut by shots fired by a Russian infantry patrol. “It was late afternoon on October 3rd. A difficult, foggy day, we had achieved little and slowly retreated when the first fagot hit us in the flank. Fagotts are anti-tank missiles dating back to Soviet Union arsenals, old but still effective, especially against our tanks, which are of the same era. We were confused by the sound of the explosion, which had damaged our eardrums injured from jostling in the cabin, but we tried to fire anyway as the aiming mechanisms were still working. But six seconds later, the second explosion came and set the fuel on fire. We were able to jump out, but then we all stayed in the hospital for over three months».
Rusty old wagons
Since then, complaints against these “sons of the last century” have been mounting. Narrow, ferrous cabins made dangerous by rusty edges. “Our T-72s were built in the early 1980s, they come from the arsenals of the Polish and Czech Republics. The latest improvements date back to two decades ago. The Russians use them too, but theirs were modified in 2020-21 to have thicker armor on the front and turrets; Their engines are more powerful, over 1,000 hp compared to our 760s, so they’re faster too».
The dream of new tanks
The hope of these tankers would be to receive the new German super tanks Leopard 2 or the British Challenger 2S, the few sophisticated American Abrams have not yet arrived and remain a chimera. “But they talk about it a lot and see very little. Here in Bakhmut’s sector we never met a single one. All we know is that the General Staff is trying to salvage the best Western weapons in order to then use them massively in the next offensive,” says Serhii Jidkot, who commands the armored brigade at the age of 41 and weighs every word carefully.
He reiterates what we know from open sources: right now, the Russians have about 2,000 tanks, the Ukrainians more or less half, and yet, thanks to NATO assistance, the quality of their arsenals is improving rapidly. And when will the Ukrainian offensive start? ‘You’re not coming to tell me. From field observations I believe it will take at least another two to four weeks, maybe longer. The weather is bad, it will rain again. The mud is too fresh, in these conditions, once our vehicles leave the paved roads, they cannot go faster than 30 km/h». Meanwhile, propaganda and disinformation are king. The Kiev commandos said yesterday that the Russians are forcing the population of the occupied territories between Kherson, Melitopol and Zaporizhia to evacuate in the direction of Crimea. They would be orders similar to those that preceded the Ukrainian attack on western Kherson in the fall. But it is not excluded that the offensive is aimed at conquering Donbass, and these rumors only serve to confuse the waters.