In an epic tank battle, Russia was defeated

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine — Before entering battle in their mud-smeared war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew perform a ritual.

The commanding officer, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer.

The men then walk around the tank, stroking its thick green armor.

“We say, ‘Please don’t let us down in battle,'” said Sgt. Artyom Knignitsky, the mechanic.

“‘Take us in and get us out.'”

His respect for his tank is understandable.

Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of warfare more than the main battle tank.

Tanks have loomed large over the conflict in Ukraine for the past few months, militarily and diplomatically, as both sides prepare for offensives.

Russia pulled tank stockpiles from Cold War-era depots and Ukraine urged Western governments to supply US tanks Abrams and the German Leopard 2.

Sophisticated Western tanks are expected to be on the battlefield in the coming months.

The new Russian armor appeared first and, in its first full-scale deployment, was decimated.

A three-week battle on a plain near the southern Ukrainian coal-mining town of Vuhledar has produced what Ukrainian authorities are calling the largest tank battle of the war so far and a major setback for the Russians .

In the protracted battle, both sides sent tanks into the fray, rumbling over dirt roads and maneuvering around rows of trees, with the Russians advancing in columns and the Ukrainians maneuvering defensively, firing from a distance or hiding when the Russian columns entered their territory. monuments.

By the time it was over, Russia not only failed to capture Vuhledar, but had also made the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks early in the war: advancing columns into ambushes.

Exploded by mines, hit by artillery or destroyed by anti-tank missiles, the charred hulks of Russian armored vehicles now litter the agricultural fields of Vuhledar, according to Ukrainian military drone footage.

The Ukrainian military said Russia lost at least 130 tanks and armored vehicles in the battle.

This figure cannot be independently verified. Ukraine does not disclose how many weapons it loses.

“We studied the roads they used, then hid and waited” to fire from ambushes, Knignitsky said.

Lack of experience also plagued the Russians.

Losses

Many of its most elite units had been left in shambles from previous fighting.

Their posts were filled with newly recruited soldiers, unaware of the Ukrainian tactics for ambushing the columns.

In a sign that Russia is running out of experienced tank commanders, Ukrainian soldiers said they had captured a medic who had been reassigned to drive a tank.

The Russian military has for decades focused on, and even mythologized, tank warfare due to its remembrance of Russian victories over the Nazis in WWII.

Factories in the Urals produced tanks by the thousands.

At Vuhledar last week, Russia had lost so many machines supporting armored attacks that it had switched tactics and resorted only to infantry attacks, Ukrainian commanders said.

The depth of Russia’s defeat has been underlined by Russian military bloggers, who have become an influential pro-war voice in the country.

Often critical of the military, they published angry tirades about the failures of repeated tank attacks, accusing the generals for wrong tactics with a historical Russian weapon.

Gray Zone, a Telegram channel affiliated with the mercenary group Wagner, published on Monday that “relatives of the dead are bent almost to murder and blood feud against the general” responsible for the assaults near Vuhledar.

In a detailed interview last week in an abandoned house near the front, Lieutenant Vladislav Bayak, deputy commander of the 1st Ukrainian Mechanized Battalion of the 72nd Brigade, described how Ukrainian soldiers were able to inflict such heavy losses on what they commanders said it was the largest tank battle of the war so far.

Ambush has been Ukraine’s signature tactic against Russian tank columns since the early days of the war.

Working from a bunker in Vuhledar, Bayak watched the first column of about 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers approach on drone video.

“We were ready,” he said.

“We knew something like this was going to happen.”

A kill zone had been set up further along a dirt road where the tanks were roaring.

The commander only had to give an order by radio:

“To battle!” Bayak said.

Anti-tank squads hidden in the trees along the fields and armed with infrared-guided American Javelins and laser-guided Ukrainian Stugna-P missiles upgraded their weapons.

Further away, the artillery batteries were ready.

The dirt road had been cleared of mines, while the surrounding fields were littered with mines, to lure the Russians forward and prevent the tanks from turning once their trap was set.

The tank column becomes more vulnerable, Bayak said, after the firing starts and the drivers panic and try to turn around, driving onto the side of the road filled with mines.

The flown vehicles then act as an impediment, slowing or halting the column.

At that moment, Ukrainian artillery opens fire, destroying more armor and killing soldiers exiting the disabled cars.

A scene of chaos and explosions follows, Bayak said.

Russian commanders sent armored columns for lack of other options against well-fortified Ukrainian positions, however costly the tactic, he said.

For about three weeks of the tank battle, repeated Russian armored assaults failed.

In one instance, Ukrainian commanders requested a HIMARS-guided missile strike; they are typically used on stationary targets such as ammunition dumps or barracks, but have also proven effective against a stationary tank column.

The Ukrainians also fired American M777 and French Caesar howitzers, as well as other Western-supplied weapons such as javelins.

Ukrainian tank crew who prayed before every battle nicknamed their tank The Wanderer, after his wandering movements on the battlefield.

In between missions, he remained hidden in trees under camouflage netting, beside a beaten road in a mud landscape of tank passage, about 5 miles from the front line.

During the battle for Vuhledar, Hrebenok, the commander, was ordered to advance from that locality on dangerous missions three or four times a day.

Hrebenok, only 20 years old, had no formal training in tank combat when the war began.

But in the hectic first days of the war he was assigned to a tank, and has fought continuously ever since, learning tricks along the way.

Training

Training is still an issue.

Ukraine is also losing skilled soldiers and replacing them with green recruits.

And many Ukrainian tank crews are trained in Western tanks in countries like Germany and Great Britain.

“All my knowledge I gained in the field,” he said.

Instead, Russian tank crews, he said, are mostly fresh recruits without the benefit of any combat to season them.

In ambushes, the crew hides the tank within a radius of a road on which Russian tanks or armored personnel carriers may travel.

Then wait in silence.

While they sit down and prepare for the ambush, they have to keep the engine warm, because restarting it would take too long.

The ignition would be noisy.

Instead they burn a small kerosene heater near the engine.

Once, as they waited, a Russian armored vehicle passed through their line of sight and they fired but narrowly missed, damaging but not destroying the car.

In the last major engagement, a week ago, the order came during the gray dawn to ambush a column of 16 Russian tanks and armored vehicles advancing towards the Ukrainian lines.

The crew said their prayer, patted the tank, and walked away.

“We hid the tank in a line of trees and waited for them,” Hrebenok said.

“It’s always scary, but we have to destroy them.”

In this case, they stopped about 3 miles from the ambush site, just out of return fire range, and fired in coordination with a drone pilot who radioed coordinates for targets they couldn’t see directly. .

The Russian column stopped at the mines and, Hrebenok said, The Wanderer opened fire.

Russian tank crews had little chance once they were in the kill zone, he said.

“We have destroyed a great deal of Russian equipment,” he said.

“What they did wrong was come to Ukraine.”

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