In early July, right after Lisichansk was won by the Russian forces, the Russian military and its allies from DNR and LNR, put on display there a large number of captured Ukrainian military equipment.
Rows of tanks, rocket launchers and armored vehicles stretched for hundreds of metres.
All this was seized by the Russians in just one sector of the frontline.
Let’s be honest, most of the Western military assistance to Ukraine is quickly destroyed or falls into the hands of the Russian military, without having any significant impact on the course of the war.
Why is this happening?
The whole thing might be pretty simple: while receiving Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Javelin anti-tank systems and French Ceasar self-propelled guns, the Ukrainian army must quickly switch to a single NATO standard, strengthen its combat capability in the hope wish to stop Russian army.
On closer examination, however, it turns out that everything is way more complicated.
The unified NATO standard is mainly associated with the calibre of ammunition, and not with the unification of equipment.
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It is impossible to switch from the German “Leopard” to the French “Leclerc” without a long and serious preparation.
A good MRLS operator, used to the Soviet-designed Grad, will not be able to handle America’s famous HIMARS.
Each weapon system handed over to Kyiv also requires special retraining of Ukrainian military specialists.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg though.
The delivery of one or two self-propelled guns with perfectly trained crews may look good in propaganda videos, but it turns into a logistical nightmare for the Ukrainian military suppliers.
Full-fledged confrontation with the enemy requires units trained and equipped with unified weapons, not a battery recruited from different European and Soviet models using five different types of shells.
All of them need different parts and accessories.
Moreover, gun and tank crews will most likely be unable to replace each other.
They are trained to fight with different models of high-tech weapons systems.
This is actually why the Eastern European countries are delivering to Ukraine what is left of their old Warsaw Pact-era stockpiles, not the latest European models.
After all, mass-scale training of specialists takes months and calls for multiple instructors.
The Kyiv authorities are having problems even with specialists trained in the use of Soviet-era technology.
For example, on July 20, numerous telegram channels posted a video with an elderly Ukrainian tank captain, a reservist, who, after being taken prisoner by the Russians, said that all the junior officers of his brigade were over 45 years old, most of whom had received military training in Soviet universities (in the USSR, reserve officers were trained in civilian universities).
Thus, during the five months of the war in Ukraine, units fully equipped with unified weapons and trained personnel never appeared.
All technologically advanced weapons are being spread across the frontline complicating the work of the Ukrainian military headquarters and turning the units receiving them into prime targets for Russian troops.
The M142 HIMARS has been no exception.
Due to their high efficiency and range, they have been able to inflict losses to the Russian army, damaging a strategically important bridge and destroying several military depots.
However, these units immediately became hunted ones, and before very long the Russian military command provided evidence of the destruction of some such systems.
In fact, the Western-trained crews of these multiple rocket launchers are now like kamikazes, whose mission is to inflict as much damage as possible before they die.
But is the Ukrainian military really willing to play this role?
Training hundreds of military specialists fast is almost mission impossible.
Guided by political considerations, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is forcing his military to move the advanced Western-supplied weapons to the frontlines as quickly as possible with no regard for the supply of ammunition and components for these systems.
As a result, instead of bringing victory to Kyiv, these weapons either burn down in Donetsk woodlands or end up as exhibits at Russian displays of captured Ukrainian weapons.
Meanwhile, middle-aged Ukrainian soldiers – the last Soviet generation – are fighting on old Polish T-72, which they learned to drive 35 years ago.
We see the results of such a policy in Ukraine, Kiev has less and less soldiers and more and more losses on the frontlines every day.
In war, there are major battles and minor battles. There was main wars, and secondary, crucial and those that are not.
There are also skirmishes that are sometimes as significant as some battles.
One two-day “event“will certainly affect the further course of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
Ever since they received the American HIMARS multi-barrel rocket launchers, the Ukrainian generals have become emboldened.
On July 20 2022, their subordinates fired two platoons of six rockets at the Antonovsky bridge across the Dnieper in the Kherson region.
There are 11 holes left on the bridge.
This happened amid announcements from Kiev that a Ukrainian “counter-offensive in the south” would follow in the Kherson region.
With the aim of regaining control over it and defeating and destroying the Russian army on the right bank of the Dnieper. However, what followed was what neither the military leadership in Kiev nor the numerous American, British, German and Polish officers who were fighting invisibly on the Ukrainian side had expected.
A battery of S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems arrived from Crimea in the Kherson region – with the task of defending the Antonovsky Bridge.
On July 21, the Ukrainians tried two new platoons.
Again with long-range rockets that American satellites and Avax guide to the target.
But the S-400 intercepted and shot down all 12 missiles launched.
Thus, the S-400 reduced to zero the American myth that the missiles of their multi-barrel rocket launchers are uncatchable (undefeatable).
This is a hint that more and more new S-400 systems will arrive in Ukraine in the coming days to close the sky over strategic objects under Russian control and over ongoing operations.
At the same time, the Russian army began serious preparations for the complete destruction of HIMARS.
