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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Ukrainian soldiers said that most US-made M2 Bradley armoured vehicles were destroyed during the counter-offensive in the Zaporozhye region. According to AFP, the vehicles were destroyed just outside the small town of Orikhiv.
“Of nine vehicles attached to the group’s mechanised infantry unit — not the only one involved in the battle — six were wrecked, three damaged but reparable, and one was unscathed,” AFP reported, adding that a Ukrainian soldier said only “very small progress” was made against the Russian army.
“Who would be happy receiving those orders, ‘Go and take those Russian positions which are well protected’?” a senior officer, who asked not to be identified, said according to AFP.
In early June, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that in the direction of Zaporozhye, Ukrainian troops consisting of 1,500 fighters and 150 armoured vehicles tried to break through Russian defences but lost up to 350 troops and 30 tanks in two hours. The minister stressed that the Ukrainian brigade was stopped in all zones toward Zaporozhye.
With the Ukrainian offensive underway, Kiev has virtually no gains to show. In contrast, images of destroyed Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles used by Ukrainian troops have circulated on social media. For this reason, several experts have warned about a heavy military defeat for Ukraine and another geopolitical failure for NATO, which again is resorting to intervention in remote territories outside its jurisdiction to achieve its objectives against Russia.
While the US and its allies have generously provided Ukraine with weapons and military vehicles during the current conflict, Ukrainian forces are institutionally and operationally incapable of successfully absorbing the wide and inconsistent array of equipment and weaponry on the battlefield.
Nonetheless, the US and the UK need Ukraine to launch a counteroffensive as they are the main financiers of Kiev’s escalation but are experiencing growing poverty and economic crises and therefore need to justify to their citizens the vast money sent to Ukraine.
Former Central Intelligence Agency agent and Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi, warned that Western media are trying to make it appear that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is succeeding and that Ukraine’s forces are encroaching on Russian positions. In this sense, and despite what is happening on the battlefield, Giraldi stressed that US, UK, and German politicians are obliged to speak positively about the situation in Ukraine.
Despite the rhetoric, images of destroyed M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German-built Leopard 2A6 tanks abandoned and burning on the Ukrainian battlefield, the harsh truth about the futility of defeating Russia is starting to sink in. The reality is that Ukraine never had the capabilities to achieve its stated goal of piercing Russian defences to sever the land bridge connecting Crimea to Russia proper.
The Western hope was that Russia would be demoralised by these casualties and accept a negotiated end to the conflict on terms acceptable to Ukraine and its Western allies. Evidently, Ukraine and its allies have failed.
The genesis of this failure can be attributed to two things. First, the low opinion that Ukraine and its NATO allies had of the combat capabilities of the Russian Army and the forces deployed in the Zaporozhye region, and second, the unrealistic expectations placed on the NATO training and equipment that were provided to Ukrainian forces and assigned to the task of breaking through Russian defences.
It is reasonable to assume that, using intelligence assessments that highlighted perceived command and control weaknesses and low morale among Russian forces, NATO and Ukrainian military planners believed that Russian defences in the Zaporozhye sector would collapse under the weight of a NATO-style assault.
Although fighting in Zaporozhye is not yet over, initial results on the battlefield show that contrary to the expectations of Ukraine and its NATO partners, the Russian military professionally performed their tasks, decisively defeating Ukrainian forces. NATO and Ukraine gambled that Russia lacked the military capability to successfully implement its military doctrine, believing that Russian command teams lacked the necessary communications to coordinate the complex operations needed and that Russian forces — especially those that were recently mobilised — lacked the training and morale to perform well in stressful combat conditions.
NATO and the Ukrainian high command threw the Ukrainian brigades into the grip of the Russian defensive lines without adequate fire support, thinking that the Russians were unable to maximise their superiority in artillery and air power to neutralise and destroy the forces of Ukrainian attackers before they could generate the momentum expected. Instead, this led to the humiliating loss of most of the US-made M2 Bradley provided to the Ukrainian military for this front.
pride of ukros before the recent fall in the field
complemented coterminously with indulgence in their ideological asshole pride.
scholtz and baerbrock doing their best to lose leopard contracts to third country potential purchasers
vietnam era vehicles proofed rubbish.
the leopard 2a6 is one of the latest versions of the leopard. it is not due to the age of the military equipment, it is due to the lack of protection (arty, air force, air defense, mine clearance, etc.) that this military equipment is destroyed. without such support, any attack, no matter what military equipment, is suicidal. even an armata would have been destroyed under these conditions.
kedy uvidíme na ukrajine nejaký ten abrams? bolo by myslím zaujímavé sledovať ako si z ním poradia ruskí vojaci. nemecké leopardy nič moc. rusi ich rozbíjajú ako orechy.
if hohols used taliban horse better quality than hillbilly amerikan
u.s. led western proxy resembling the iraqi army in desert storm… steppe storm.
american armor is a piece of garbage. during the illegal occupation of iraq thousands of us soldiers died at the hands of barefoot iraqi goatherder insurgents using cheap ieds and efps
the bradley was never intended to be a vehicle used for a frontal charge of a near peer armed adversary.
at best it was supposed to be a slightly more mobile troop carrier and a mobile secure firing position when fighting hadjis with shitty outdated rpgs and light weapons.
the bradley had its day in the sun in iraq and afghanistan although less so in the latter as mraps became more common as the preferred mobility fighting/patrol platform.
it’s an ifv. meant to fight alongside armor and not just be a battle taxi. a 25mm gun and tow missiles are worthless when you’re doing suicide/kamikaze runs. a bradley is superior to a bmp in every way but they’re not cost effective. i think they’re around 5 times the price.
you are exactly point-on, ahmed: the biggest supporter of the russian army and its military offensive have been the dumb-down, dim-witted western media portraying the russians as low-life alcoholic serfs incapable of holding the slightest rifle or firing the most feeble missile, thereby doing all the work for the russians that sun tzu explained in his masterful art of war is a necessary condition to strategic victory: make your enemy believe you are weak !
offensives and attacks tend to lead to casualties three times or more higher for the attacking side. russians are well dug in behind the front lines. when the front is breached, it will be more and more difficult to keep on crossing, until one has passed all of them.
the zelensky dictatorship, the “west” and pro-ukrainian media continue to falsely claim russia is “running out of weapons and ammo.” this is pure “ghetto blab.”
anyone seen the film ‘the pentagon wars’? lots of sheep lost their lives there too.
the fulda gap scenario for which all of these 20th century weapons platforms were built is not happening.