World

Ukrainian Soldiers Trade Tanks and Artillery on the Front Line


Most of the exchanges involved items obtained from the Russian military, in exchange for urgently needed supplies. One soldier said: “Call it a simplification of the bureaucracy.


DONETSK REGION, Ukraine – The Ukrainian sergeant slid a captured Russian missile launcher into the middle of a small room. He was very satisfied. The actual weapon is completely new. It is built in 2020, and its thermobaric warhead can be lethal to troops and armored vehicles.

But the sergeant, nicknamed Zmei, had no plans to fire it at advancing Russian soldiers or at a tank trying to rush through his unit. frontline in eastern Ukraine.

Instead, he will use it as a bargaining chip.

In the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, Zmei was more than just a lowly sergeant. He was the commander of the brigade for a system of wartime barter between Ukrainian forces. Common along the front lines, soldiers say, bartering works like a kind of shadow economy, in which units acquire weapons or equipment and trade them for supplies without they need it urgently.

Most of the exchanges involved items obtained from the Russian military. Ukrainian soldiers called them “trophies”.

“Usually, transactions are done very quickly,” Zmei said last week in an interview in Ukraine’s mineral-rich Donbas region, where the 93 is currently stationed. “Let’s just call it a simplification of the bureaucracy.”

In spite of Western weapon line and equipment in recent months, the Ukrainian military still relies heavily on weapons and vehicles obtained from its better-equipped enemy Russia to make the warships needed to wage war; most of Ukraine old Soviet-era arsenal or destroyed, worn out, or lacking ammunition.

That has forced Ukrainian soldiers to move across the battlefield to find what they need when their supply lines are strained. And a relatively small number of large foreign weapons, such as the American-made M777 howitzer, are spread very thinly over the air. 1,500 miles in front.

Fedir, one of the brigade’s supply sergeants and Zmei’s subordinate, told military commanders in the capital: “We have hope in Kyiv. “But we rely on ourselves. We don’t try to sit and wait like fools until Kyiv sends us something.”

To protect against retaliation, Zmei, Fedir, and others interviewed for this article asked to use only their names or nicknames.

The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the equipment exchange.

Seizing Russian items became increasingly difficult as the war entered a more static phase, with the Russian crushing artillery fighting forcing the Ukrainians to retreat slowly in the east, while trying to regain territory in the south. That has created an even higher demand for the items traded in the underground exchanges of soldiers.

Such was the case in early May, when the 93rd Division – a unit known to have fought in most of the major battles of the war – was operating around the Russian-occupied city of Izium. Zmei, who before the war owned a small publishing house specializing in dark fantasy novels, received an innocuous message from a nearby Ukrainian commander.

“Hello,” the message read. “Listen, here’s the problem, we have an unnecessary tank, a slightly damaged T-72.”

“And we will exchange it for something nice,” added the commander.

The series of text messages, sent via messaging app Telegram and reviewed by The New York Times, are just one example of an unofficial hand-swapping device.

The commander’s request was modest: a transport truck and a few sniper rifles in exchange for a Russian tank. But Zmei tells his customers, “This is too little for a tank, write down the other things you need.” The commander replied that he had a lot of tanks and only wanted what was required.

When the commander mentioned all the tanks owned by his unit, Zmei felt an opportunity to expand the trade. He wanted more tanks and noted that the 93 had foreign-supplied anti-tank missiles and a portable US surface-to-air missile system available for swap.

“It’s possible to get a launcher for a Stinger, an NLAW, various big things to trade – and a lot of other things,” Zmei said, referring to several Western weapons, which cost tens of thousands of dollars. each pcs.

Of the more than half a dozen soldiers interviewed for this article, most say this underground economy is driven by the need to exist. Sometimes, they say, that means breaking up a clumsy bureaucracy.

Although the soldiers say they must send the captured equipment up the supply chain back to Kyiv, they note that there is little effort to investigate underground exchanges, let alone punish anyone who does. that.

Western government, yes provide billions of dollars in military equipmentforced Ukraine to guard against possible corruption in the distribution process, but to date there have been no documented cases of weapons ultimately falling into the hands of anyone other than other Ukrainian units.

But even keeping arms transfers informal can pose problems.

Matt Schroeder, an analyst at the Small Arms Survey, a research organization, said that informal transfers of matériel between units “could undermine stockpile management procedures,” but “in itself” Such a transfer is not indicative of a trade or leak.”

Sitting near the turret of a captured Russian T-80 tank, a Ukrainian soldier named Alex explained that sending captured equipment back to Kyiv for official calculations was a problem.

“There’s no guarantee we’ll get it back anytime soon,” he said. “We try to do it mostly ourselves.”

A former software engineer from Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, Alex is a celebrity in the 93rd generation. Ukrainian commanders said the captured tank was nicknamed Bunny because of him. The commander had destroyed several Russian armored vehicles around Izium and the northeastern city of Sumy during the previous war.

But now the tank was far ahead and was waiting for the repair of the turret. A significant part of that work was acquired recently by trading a 120 mm mortar and a heavy machine gun with another unit, Alex said.

Just as he was saying, a captured Russian armored personnel carrier rolled into the repair bay. It was parked behind a barely running Ukrainian armored vehicle that a soldier joked probably took part in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Alex is waiting for his own kind of fix. He was shot in the right leg during a patrol in May. The bullet broke his femur.

He and several other Ukrainian soldiers were on reconnaissance patrol in the gray zone – the area between the Russian and Ukrainian front lines – when they were hit. The mission, he said, accomplished two goals: finding Russian locations and finding abandoned equipment.

Alex said: “We are losing to the tanks. “If this war goes this far, sooner or later we will run out of Soviet equipment and other Soviet tanks, so we will have to switch to something else.”

Near the underground headquarters not far from the front lines, Alex’s battalion commander, Bogdan, described the dire situation of his unit. The sound of firecrackers resounded in the fields.

“We are fighting whatever we get from the enemy,” said Bogdan, noting that 80% of his current supply is Russian equipment.

“No better than in other battalions,” he added.

Bogdan’s unit of about 700 men arrived to replace Ukrainian forces, which were weakened by casualties and loss of equipment. Now, after six months of acting like a “firefighter” by rushing from one frontline hotspot to the next, his troops face the same fate.

“We are losing a lot of men,” Bogdan said. “We couldn’t deal with their artillery. These, and the airstrikes, are the big problems.”

When asked about sophisticated Western-supplied weapons that government officials say would be a big difference, he said that in his brigade, “no one has the equipment to do so.” overseas,” adding, “We had a lot of questions about where it was going.”

Those questions fell on a 28-year-old Ukrainian soldier named Michael. He lived in a dilapidated one-story house a few miles from the front line. As an infantryman, he is currently Bogdan’s supply officer.

In Michael’s cramped kitchen were wall prints listing the Western equipment his battalion desperately needed: coded radios, semi-automatic grenade launchers and Polish 155 mm howitzers, called Krabs.

A Krab commander named Andriy said his artillery vehicle was not available for trade, although he might consider swapping if offered a French self-propelled howitzer in exchange.

The 93 currently only owns old Soviet-era cannons with worn barrels and few bullets.

Michael said: “I had to go buy everything and trade everything, and bring it all here.

“So what’s going on is a personal initiative,” he said. “You’re taking a risk, it’s a crime. No one will thank you. It is a thankless job.”



Source link

news7f

News7F: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button