A new progress made by the Russian army on the flaming eastern Ukrainian front, is the first for the regular army away from the fighters of the “Wagner” group, by carrying out a massive airdrop, accompanied by the infusion of new weapons of armored vehicles and marches, with the aim of thwarting the Ukrainian “spring offensive” plan.
The airdrop was followed by an advance of the army forces, especially the armored corps, as they took control of the town of Kremenaya in the Luhansk axis; To tighten the screws on all axes of the east in front of the Ukrainian forces.
In two separate interviews with “Sky News Arabia”, a researcher in military affairs from Russia says that these developments prove the falsity of the West’s claim of the existence of a Russian armaments crisis, while a researcher from Ukraine in the same specialty is betting on time, and the arrival of advanced armored vehicles from Europe and Washington to turn the equation around and strengthen the Ukrainian forces. .
“biggest response”
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had eliminated 350 Ukrainian soldiers on the Donetsk axis, and 120 others in Luhansk, on the eastern front, within 24 hours, in addition to destroying equipment, weapons and vehicles.
Vorogtsov Starikov, a Russian researcher at the “Volsk” military institution, says that this progress was followed by the pumping of drones such as “Orion”, mobile defense systems and advanced tanks, most notably the “T-90-Prorev”.
Starikov lists examples of the “Orion” capabilities that Moscow pushed into the field to hunt Western armored vehicles and tanks that Kiev received from Poland:
• It can hunt tanks and armored vehicles with high accuracy by means of “Kha-50” guided missiles.
• Its maximum take-off weight is 1150 kg, and its flight speed is 200 km per hour.
• It can stay in the air for one day, and carry guided bombs to target armored vehicles.
In addition to the marches, the Ministry of Defense deployed “T90-Prorev” tanks in the Bakhmut and Donbas fronts in the entire east, in addition to the southern front also in the vicinity of the Dnipro River in Kherson, and among the advantages of these tanks:
- It is one of the smallest tanks in the world in height; Which helped her move quickly.
- It is equipped with 40 ammunition of different types, as well as “Reflex-M” missiles.
- Land armored vehicles hit, as well as slow-moving air targets.
In light of this, the Russian researcher believes that such advanced weapons “are the biggest response to the West’s support for Ukraine, especially with advanced tanks, with which it moved the war to the level of direct confrontation between it and Moscow, after it was by proxy in the last period.”
The acceleration of the battles and the pumping of these weapons “proves the falsity of the West’s narratives about the existence of an armaments crisis within the Russian army.”
Ukraine tactics
In the other camp, Ukraine is betting, according to Mosienko Matuzov, a military specialist at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, on the element of time to enter the largest amount of Western weapons, especially armored vehicles and tanks, in the southern front and the vicinity of Kherson.
While Matuzov admits that Moscow has indeed made progress in recent weeks, he described it as “limited”, and that it “cost it heavy losses, whether in the “Wagner” forces or the regular forces, unlike the Ukrainian fronts that are still steadfast in the face of attempts to penetrate Bakhmut and Donbass to the east, or to cross Dnipro River around Kherson to the south.
In Matuzov’s estimation, “the current equation is still in favor of Kiev, as Moscow cannot impose its control over the regions it annexed (the four regions it annexed to its lands in the September 2022 referendum), or resolve any of the battle fronts now open.”
He expects progress for Kiev after the completion of deliveries of arms shipments from Washington and the West, which have already begun to arrive, especially from Poland, beginning at the end of February.
