Sputnik reported yesterday on skyrocketing desertion rates in the Ukraine ground forces, and that NATO-supplied vehicles are turning out to be junk. On the first, morale in the Ukrainian forces is low as soldiers suspect that they are being sent to their deaths while their commanders try to persuade them to keep fighting, a captured Ukrainian POW has revealed, Sputnik reported. He also mentioned that the Ukrainian soldiers who deserted did so after seeing action. “They did not say anything. They just spent a few days drinking vodka, then they grabbed their things and went AWOL,” the prisoner recalled, describing that “maybe about 50” Ukrainian soldiers deserted that way. “They just turn around and leave, maybe after realizing that their superiors are lying. Everything they [Ukrainian officers] say is a lie. People begin to think and realize that this is a meat grinder.”
The second report concerns the German-supplied Marder armored vehicle which, according to a recently captured Ukrainian POW, are prone to breaking down, and that these armored vehicles malfunctioned “all the time.” According to the POW, in most instances that he is familiar with, the crew of a Marder IFV were unable to deal with a malfunction by themselves and had to call in a team of “specially trained people” who handled the repairs.
As for the M1 tanks, Scott Ritter said in a Sputnik column that they will turn out to be iron coffins for their Ukrainian crews, not because of any inherent flaw in the tank itself, but because the training of the Ukrainians doesn’t go beyond the basic rudimentary skills of operating the tank and of light maintenance. “The M1A1, when crewed by an experienced team of soldiers, is a lethal weapon,” Ritter concludes. “When crewed by Ukrainians possessing only basic skills—especially when going up against veteran Russian soldiers equipped with modern tank-killing weapons—the M1A1 is little more than a death trap, a mobile steel coffin for the four men inside. This was the case with the German Leopard 2A6, with the Swedish Strv 122, and the British Challenger 2. And it will be the case with the American M1A1.”
