How is the Russo-Ukraine War going, months after I lost interest due to Ukraine's failed southern Summer-Autumn-Winter Counteroffensive sputtering out? Well, Russian forces are turning main battle tanks into rolling Tuff Sheds, if that's any clue.
Early in the war, Russians had been mocked — probably unfairly — for attaching what were derided as "cope cages" to the tops of their vehicles, even armored ones like tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFV). The makeshift steel cages were more to help Russian troops cope with the idea of Ukraine's armed drones and antitank missiles than to provide any protection.
But the troops stuck with them, so I was inclined to believe the contrary reports that cope cages did at least some good. Cope cages, however, are so very 2022. Allow me to show you the leading spring fashion for 2024: the turtle tank.
Another video of that Russian tank. https://t.co/856byTmabI pic.twitter.com/dg9KhfcD3R
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 17, 2024
First spotted in April, the turtle tank — sometimes known as a barn tank — is a tank that has what looks like a steel shed welded to it. Because that's exactly what it is.
As comical as they appear, there is a method to the madness. While it's true that welding a freakin' barn to a tank limits its mobility and its ability to aim and fire, it's also beside the point. Tank-on-tank battles have been exceedingly rare in the Russo-Ukraine War — drones are the real enemy, not other tanks. Ukraine forces say that the combination of the giant shed and electronic warfare gear means they have to expend extra drones to dispatch each tank.
Nobody looks cool wearing waders but you wouldn't want to go fly fishing without them. Turtle tanks — even though they look something like a throwback to the primitive early tanks used in the First World War — are a suitable, if goofy-looking, response to super-modern drones.
In the north and the south of Ukraine, the war might be getting interesting again.
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Russia's renewed offensive towards Kharkiv set tongues wagging (not mine) in May because Ukraine had forced Russia completely out of the Kharkiv region in 2022. Ukraine had performed the same feat around Kyiv earlier that year and did again it in Kherson at about the same time. They had hoped (but failed) to threepeat in the south toward Crimea last year.
So when Russia scraped up enough recruits to make another play for Kharkiv (Ukraine's second city), it seemed like a big deal. But so far, Russia has managed to capture just 13 villages. Observers say the new offensive "basically ground to a halt after a few days of small advances."
For now, anyway.
The attacks are a painful distraction for Kyiv, whose forces are already stretched thin — in no small part due to unnecessary losses taken in last year's ill-advised southern counteroffensive. But the Kharkiv attacks also seem unlikely in the extreme to prove some kind of war-winning move.
In the south, while Ukraine in 2023 barely dented Russia's lines defending the Black Sea coast and the strategic Crimea Peninsula, they are making life hell for the Russian forces there. The Economist reported Sunday that the "peninsula is becoming a death trap for the Kremlin’s forces."
The approval in April of the Biden administration’s $61bn military-support package, after six months of Congressional delay, is having an impact. In particular, the arrival of atacms ballistic missiles, with a range of 300km, means that Ukraine can now hit any target in Russian-occupied Crimea, with deadly effect.
According to various reports, Kyiv is now doing in Crimea what it did before kicking Russia out of the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions in 2022. They're using missiles and drones to degrade Russian logistics until holding the ground becomes untenable. That said, the Ukraine Army appears to be in no more condition to take back Crimea this year than they were last year. But Russia will be made to pay an ever-higher price for occupying it.
In short, the war is going less badly and more weirdly than I thought.
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