Ukraine's West-trained brigades begin combat
WASHINGTON >> They are fighting more effectively at night than their Russian counterparts, U.S. officials say.
They are using U.S.made Bradley fighting vehicles to destroy Russian armor with anti-tank missiles. And they are deploying combined arms tactics — synchronized attacks by infantry, armor and artillery forces — that they learned from American and other Western troops.
It is, finally, showtime for the 36,000 Ukrainian soldiers — nine brigades — that have been armed, equipped and trained outside of Ukraine over the past several months by the United States and its NATO allies.
How these Westerntrained troops perform over the next few months, military experts say, will help determine the success of Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive to push Russian forces out of occupied territory. Their performance also will demonstrate whether the tens of billions of dollars in weapons that Ukraine has received from its allies, including $40 billion from Joe Biden's administration, is managing to transform the Ukrainian military into a NATO-standard fighting force.
Biden administration officials are hoping the nine brigades will show that the U.S. way of warfare — using combined arms, synchronized tactics and regiments with empowered senior enlisted soldiers — is superior to the rigidly centralized command-structure that is the Russian approach.
But the going has been slow for Ukraine, and even proponents of the U.S. way acknowledge that the beginning of the counteroffensive has not yet provided any swift breakthroughs like the Ukrainian military's one-week retaking of Kharkiv last fall.
“This is the hardest part of the counteroffensive for the Ukrainian military, and it's also the stage where Russian forces are able to bring their remaining advantages in artillery and air support,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corp. “If the Ukrainians are able to breach, then the dynamics could shift.”
Ukrainian troops have had some small successes, breaking through a first line of Russian defenses and reclaiming several villages.
But they have lost some of their newest Western tanks and armored vehicles, and both sides have suffered a high number of casualties, according to a British intelligence report.
“This is very hard work,” said Frederick B. Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and former top U.S. Army commander in Europe. But, he added, “That's what they've been training to do for many months.”