Ukraine’s recent counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions liberated over 3,800 square miles of Russian-occupied territory, erasing months of Moscow’s gains in weeks.
Fortunately, there is an ample supply of Soviet- and Russian-made vehicles to be found for Kyiv if Washington looks in the right places. The United States and its European allies certainly should provide some of these capabilities while simultaneously looking beyond NATO stockpiles for Soviet- and Russian-made vehicles that the Ukrainian military could deploy immediately into battle without establishing new time-consuming training programs and burdensome additional logistical systems. Additional tanks and armored vehicles would help support Ukraine’s counteroffensive by providing the ground maneuver and mobile protected firepower capabilities necessary to exploit opportunities created by artillery fire. Kyiv’s list of requested weapons circulating in October included 300 main battle tanks and 1,000 armored personnel carriers.
While Ukraine has a large inventory of tanks and armored vehicles, Kyiv needs more to avoid unnecessary casualties, replace combat losses, and sustain its counteroffensive. “We’re fighting the war out of our pickup trucks,” stated a Ukrainian soldier when reflecting on Ukraine’s slowing counteroffensive in Luhansk region.
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