The Ukrainian military has previously announced a ‘major spring offensive’ but it will be ‘months’ before we expect this, says Dick Jandee, a security expert at Clinkendale. Ukraine receives a small number of different types of tanks from NATO countries and they must be ‘trained first’.
Jande calls these tanks “critical” to defeating the Russians. But he still lacked the framework to launch such a massive offensive. That is why the security expert thinks that a major Ukrainian attack will happen only in late spring or early summer.
Training completed
Ukrainians in the United Kingdom completed their training with British equipment this week. The Ukrainians have a patchwork of tank equipment. The Americans gave them Abrams tanks, the British gave them Challenger tanks, and the Panther tanks came from Germany. ‘It’s not very comfortable,’ says Jandee. ‘Of course, this partly reflects the fact that we work with different types of equipment in NATO. This also means that the Ukrainian army has to train on all kinds of different types of tanks.
“It also means that an entire logistics chain is dedicated to that particular piece of equipment,” says Jandee. According to Jandee, it is not efficient and requires more personnel than if the military had only one type of material. But the situation in Ukraine is at the same time a simple ‘we get what we can get, they accept those comparative disadvantages’.
