The War in the Ukraine
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Russia ‘fights to the end’ – Borrell
The West must keep arming Ukraine because Moscow defeated Napoleon and Hitler, the EU’s top diplomat said
Josep Borrell © AFP
EU foreign policy commissioner Josep Borrell said on Friday that the West must keep sending weapons to Kiev, warning those who think Russia has lost or is doing poorly that Moscow has a history of winning long wars.
“Russia is a great country, a great nation that is used to fighting to the end, almost losing and then recovering,” Borrell said in a speech in Madrid, bringing up the 1812 invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte’s French empire and the 1941 invasion by Adolf Hitler’s Germany as historical examples of this.
“It would be absurd to think that Russia has lost the war or that its military is incompetent,” Borrell added.
He claimed that so far Moscow “has been losing the war but it still has enormous strength and capacity to continue [fighting].”
Because of this, he said, “now is the time to continue arming Ukraine with the necessary material and military means to wage the kind of war it has to wage.” He described this as “not only a defensive war but one that allows it to take the initiative and break fronts and prevent Russia from launching a new, very powerful and bloody offensive in a few months.”
Borrell’s invocation of Napoleon and Hitler was unusual, as Moscow has repeatedly compared the current efforts by the collective West with the two invasions, known as the Patriotic War and the Great Patriotic War, respectively.
Napoleon led a multinational army recruited from all across French-dominated Europe and reached Moscow, but failed to compel Russia’s surrender. The war ended with Russian cavalry on the streets of Paris two years later. Hitler’s effort, also aided by numerous continental allies and vassals, fell just short of Moscow. The Axis armies were savaged at Stalingrad and turned back at Kursk, with Russian soldiers taking Berlin in 1945.
According to Russian estimates, the US and its allies funneled almost $100 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and supplies to the Ukrainian military in 2022. Despite this unprecedented effort, Borrell on Friday continued to insist the West was not a party to the conflict, and that the EU did everything it could to avoid it. Former leaders of and , however, publicly admitted that the European-mediated Minsk agreements had been a ploy to buy Ukraine time to prepare for war.
The EU’s high commissioner for foreign affairs spoke at Madrid’s Teatro Real, where he was presented with the New Economy Forum 2022 Award. One of the presenters was Javier Solana, Borrell’s predecessor at the EU post and NATO’s secretary general in 1999, when the US-led bloc launched an unprovoked war against Yugoslavia.
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Question : number of servicable M1A1 tanks in USA inventory, and capability to maintain them.
Interesting data points:
In 2019 the AST was avarded with a contract for Abrams wheel inserts, in 2021 they delivered 29000 inserts, 9700 remaining to make.
IT sum up to 28700 wheel.
Each tank has 14 wheel, means the above ammount is good for 2000 tanks.
So, we can say that the servicable tanks at the moment is not more than 2000 pcs.
Other interesting point is this :
M1 needs track repalcement after 850 miles, they planed in the 90s to introduce new track, heavier but lasting (theoretically ) twice as long.
However originally they planned the 850 miles track as 2000 miles one, means the "plan" and "reality " has no relationship in the USA military.
We can assume that the wheels needs to be replaced with the track, or more frequently.
The wheel assembly of the M1 looks like two indentical wheel, with a spacer between them (probably this spacer is the AST order)
Now, it could means that the USA at the moment has 2000 tank , each capable to travel 850-1800 miles.
Means a high intensity conflict would eat up the complete spare inventory in 6-12 month. Maybe they loose only 400-500 tank, but all spare will go with them.
Of course it is a big "IF" about the design of the wheel, how long the AST wheel insert last, life of tracks and wheel assy and so on, but if we consider the reluctance of Mr. USA to supply tanks....
Interesting data points:
In 2019 the AST was avarded with a contract for Abrams wheel inserts, in 2021 they delivered 29000 inserts, 9700 remaining to make.
IT sum up to 28700 wheel.
Each tank has 14 wheel, means the above ammount is good for 2000 tanks.
So, we can say that the servicable tanks at the moment is not more than 2000 pcs.
Other interesting point is this :
M1 needs track repalcement after 850 miles, they planed in the 90s to introduce new track, heavier but lasting (theoretically ) twice as long.
However originally they planned the 850 miles track as 2000 miles one, means the "plan" and "reality " has no relationship in the USA military.
We can assume that the wheels needs to be replaced with the track, or more frequently.
The wheel assembly of the M1 looks like two indentical wheel, with a spacer between them (probably this spacer is the AST order)
Now, it could means that the USA at the moment has 2000 tank , each capable to travel 850-1800 miles.
Means a high intensity conflict would eat up the complete spare inventory in 6-12 month. Maybe they loose only 400-500 tank, but all spare will go with them.
Of course it is a big "IF" about the design of the wheel, how long the AST wheel insert last, life of tracks and wheel assy and so on, but if we consider the reluctance of Mr. USA to supply tanks....
Considering they have built 10 000 Abrams tanks and the US Army still has >6000 ( and about 3700 in reserve )- do you really think- even if ALL of these reserve tanks are not functional ( and I think that isn't very probable ), that they couldn't cannibalise say 14 or 100 of them in relativly short time- if the political will is there? After all, nobody said these tanks need to be there tommorow.
Dont put words in my mouth, it's not me that's not sending tanks, it's the US government.
The only thing I said is offering a plausible explanation in that they're simply needed more to fulfil America's more pressing ambitions elsewhere.
This has been discussed ad nauseum, no need to act so surprised, not necessary.
- - Ukrainians are formally trained on Soviet-era hardware, that's equipment with most expertise and familiarity. On the other hand, NATO equipment are expensive, hard to train on, complex, and requires many months of training to be proficient and competent.
- - Given the window of opportunity before the spring offensive is rapidly closing, it makes sense to gather second-hand equipment that Ukraine is most familiar with to expedite reinforcements and replenish equipment they are most familiar with.
- - Many Cold-War era production lines have been discontinued and will take many years to spool up production and a large commitment of future orders to sustain the production line. It's not like there is surge capacity for discontinued older Cold War-era equipment that Ukraine is familiar with.
- - Specifically US MBTs require a strong logistics support for fuel logistics and maintenance. US has traditionally used it's airpower to protect a large logistics supply chain, which enables Abrams to spearhead operations. Ukraine has neither airpower superiority, nor a large logistics supply chain, which renders the gas-guzzling and high-maintenance US Abrams to be inefficient and suboptimal to donate in large numbers, though a symbol donation is not outside the question.
Americans running out of spare parts for M1 is as probable as Russians running out of cruise missiles..... NIL. NONE. NADA.
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Seems we are reaching "vial of soap is totally Iraqi WMD's" levels of proof
Whatever... Ukraine is receiving train loads of weapons from all over the world, even if Russia or Wagner would receive some, why the sour grapes ? That's just some high level of stupidity to make a fuss even if it's real.
Why does the Iraqi military have Abrams yet they are not supplied to Ukraine? Iraqi's would have had more experience with soviet vehicles also, As i am aware maintenance is done by u.s mechanics not iraqi's in the case of ukraine where all of the foreign equipment ends up going back out of country for repairs anyways, ukraine has operated turbine tanks with the t-80 so is the t-80 less thirsty? I doubt Abrams would be much harder to work on then a leopard 2 aside from the turbine, so with all of this i cannot see why the u.s is not atleast supply 10 like the u.k did.