UKRAINE could unleash a massive “Desert Storm” style tank assault to push 200 miles behind the Russian lines, a Brit ex-colonel has said.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon compared the possible counter attack to the opening lightning fast offensive of the first Gulf War.
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Brave soldiers have been holding the line against Putin’s twisted invasion – enduring for months some of the bloodiest fighting of the war in brutal, close quarters trench warfare-style battles.
But the Ukrainian leadership has been clear, they view this high-attrition fighting as a price worth paying while they ready for their counter offensive.
Behind the frontline, a new wave of troops determined to protect their homeland have been training with Western weapons.
They will be rolling into battle with key new pieces of kit, such as Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 main battle tanks, Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles, and new artillery systems.
And the US is dramatically speeding up the timeline for the Ukrainians to get M1 Abrams tanks, with training on the vehicles to begin next month.
With these weapons – in theory they should outrange and outmatch the Russians, laying the groundwork for the new offensive.
And for Colonel de Bretton-Gordon with these new weapons, they should be able to execute a massive assault similar to the opening days of Operation Desert Storm.
He explained the Western armour will outmatch the ageing Soviet-era tank fleet currently being used by Putin.
They will punch through tank traps, trenches and barbed wire like the so-called “Saddam Line” back in 1991.
Saddam Hussein’s fortifications were breached in a matter of hours by the US forces using M1 Abrams tanks – just as the Ukrainians will soon have in their arsenal.
The Desert Storm ground offensive lasted just 100 hours and saw an army led by American and British forces make mincemeat of Saddam’s tanks and troops – who ended up surrendering en masse.
Colonel De Bretton-Gordon told The Sun Online: “Over four days [in Desert Storm] we covered a couple of hundred miles. The Ukrainians will probably want to go a bit further but not much further.”
The ensuing battles saw Western tanks like the Abrams and Challenger face off against Russian armour and make short work of them.
For example, the battle of 73 Easting saw the US VII Corps including UK 1st Armoured Division ride into battle against the Tawakalna Division of Saddam’s supposedly elite Republican Guards.
In just a few hours, 160 Iraqi tanks, 180 armoured personnel carriers, and 12 artillery pieces had been destroyed.
Up to 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed, while the allies lost just six men and one armoured vehicle.
Colonel De Bretton-Gordon believes Ukraine will attempt something similar, pushing forward along a narrow axis with the aim of advancing 200 or so miles behind Russian lines.
If they Ukrainians can in similar style smash through Russia’s defences, they will then exploit that position to cause havoc and destruction behind enemy lines.
The key to Ukrainian victory, Colonel De Bretton-Gordon says, will be putting in place the logistics to maintain such an advance until it can get far enough behind Russian lines to cause maximum devastation.
He added: “The Ukrainians are very canny. I’ve been impressed with the way they operate.
“There isn’t much we can teach them. Obviously we taught them how to use our tanks and artillery but in terms of teaching the generals, they are already very impressive.
“Now they have tanks and artillery for the close fight, I’m pretty confident they’ll be able to [succeed].”]
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Meanwhile, other military experts also agreed that the Ukrainian counter offensive is coming – and it is going to be a major problem from the Russians.
Former US General Ben Hodges believes Ukraine’s big counterpunch will be focused on retaking the annexed region of Crimea.
And said that Kyiv will be dreaming much bigger than simply winning the Battle of Bakhmut – the longest running and bloodiest battle of the war since it starts last February.
He told The Sun Online: “Ukraine could kill every Russian soldier within 200 miles of Bakhmut and it wouldn’t change the strategic situation.”
“The key is winning Crimea – that will be the decisive terrain. Once Crimea is liberated, it’s all over, it changes everything.
“Ukraine knows that it will never be safe without taking back Crimea.”
When could it happen? “It was never going to be a spring offensive,” he stated.
“They’ve been busy training, practising and carefully protecting information – they’re waiting on the right conditions for traffic ability – waiting on the ground to be able to sustain the attack,” he speculated.
For months now, the war has been “at stalemate” and frontlines have remained “pretty static”, but retired Brit Brigadier Ben Barry told The Sun Online – but change is coming.
The senior fellow for land warfare at International Institute for Strategic Studies said Russia has been making “very slow progress at the cost of enormous casualties” in Bakhmut.
Ukraine has “said repeatedly 2023 is the year of counteroffensives, where they want to evict Russia from Ukraine,” he explained.
“Ukraine will want to make sure that offensive works, so we’re looking at a ‘big bang’ concentrated attack, rather than dribbling it away in penny packets.”
He continued: “The longer they delay it, the more modern weapons and armour they will have in service and train people to operate it.”
Ukraine is known to be forming a network of new “Storm Brigades” – with around 40,000 soldiers.
Named Hurricane, Spartan, Chervona Kalyna, Frontier, Rage, Azov and Kara Dag (a mountain in Crimea), Ukraine’s new units are preparing to play their role in a decisive new offensive to push back Putin’s troops.
War analysts at the Conflict Intelligence Team said the main goal of the fresh counter offensive will be to “unblock” Bakhmut.
“The vehicles are already on the territory of Ukraine at the disposal of its military and may be used in combat in the nearest future,” the team wrote in their situation report on March 28.
“We expect that the primary goal of the Ukrainian counter-offensive will be to unblock Bakhmut.”
One thing is absolutely sure – Ukraine will never give up.
Samantha de Bendern
Commander of Ukrainian land forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said recently: “Our task is to destroy as many enemies as possible and create the conditions for us to launch an offensive.”
Russian and Eastern Europe security expert Samantha de Bendern said that she is likewise sceptical that a Ukrainian counteroffensive will take place until at least the summer.
She told The Sun Online that its troops are “busy defending Bakhmut and are holding it by the skin of their teeth….and will not be ready in the near-future”.
“That will change very soon,” she said, when the foreign-trained Ukrainian troops arrive and so do their glitzy new weapons and machinery.
Agreeing with the military experts, she believes “they can’t go on all fronts… it will be a concentrated assault.”
“The frontline is so long, it’s about as long as the stretch from London to Barcelona”.
However, the former political officer from NATO HQ explained that what the offensive will entail will “be the best kept secret for the Ukrainians”.
They are the masters of “surprise”, she said, who know how to disguise their true intentions, “create fake lays and then attack somewhere else”.
The Chatham House Associate Fellow disagrees that Crimea will be Ukraine’s aim as “there is pressure from the Americans not too attack the peninsula, they are not welcoming to Ukrainian ideals of liberating Crimea”.
Instead, de Bendern believes the attack will be focused East and will wholly depend on when the Western weapons sent to Ukraine will become operational.
Air support will also be absolutely essential to any Ukrainian offensive, she said. The recently leaked Pentagon files exposed the fundamental truth that “Ukraine air defences are running out” and so too are their aircrafts.
Whatever the plan behind the offensive, de Bendern said: “one thing is absolutely sure – Ukraine will never give up.
“They will fight to the last man.”
Iona Cleave
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