Perched on the front of an antique Soviet-designed tank near the frontline in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier clutches a can of cat food converted into a paraffin candle .
The soldiers of Commander Maxime’s brigade rely on this kind of innovative – albeit precarious – DIY to stay warm in the bowels of their tanks, such as this T-64, one of the old models of tanks making up the Ukrainian arsenal.
Drivers of these machines hope to one day get real on-board heating – if kyiv’s lobbying for newer and more modern tanks succeeds with its Western allies.
But Commander Maxime admits: “The cold is the least of our worries”.
“The situation is very difficult, the equipment is breaking” and the ammunition is missing, he tells AFP under the falling snow.
Near him, a young mechanic is working under an armored vehicle in the icy mud, dug in deep crevices left by the tracks of machines heading towards the front.
“We don’t have spare parts to maintain the tanks and the tracks break, so if our maintenance brigade sees tanks that have been hit, they take what they need,” explains the commander.
– “Sitting on the ammunition” –
The brigade thus showed AFP a series of tanks near Lyman, a town ravaged by war, recaptured from Russian forces in October but still close to the front.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba again this week put pressure on the West, which provides the country with military aid, including ammunition, artillery, anti-aircraft systems and armored infantry.
Interest has focused in particular on the German Leopard 2 battle tank, which Poland, which has one, said it was ready to supply to kyiv, subject to the green light from Berlin.
These more modern tanks outperform their Soviet counterparts in many ways, says Captain Volodymyr Tchaikovsky, 54, but most important is where ammunition is stored.
“In a Soviet tank, the crew is sitting on the ammunition, so if the tank is hit, it almost certainly means that 100% of the crew is dead,” says the captain, while in the Leopard the shells are stored behind an armored panel instead of the crew compartment.
“What matters to us above all is the safety of our crews and their lives are our priority. Equipment can be replaced, not personnel”, according to Mr. Tchaikovsky. “That’s the main reason why we need Western tanks. Everything else – GPS, night vision, thermal vision… – comes after.”
– Not a “miracle cure” –
Mark Cancian, an analyst with the American think tank CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), also stresses the importance of this point.
Even if for some it is a “design flaw” of the Leopard – storing the ammunition in the back makes the tank bigger and makes it a bigger target – the expert speaks rather of a “compromise”. Which the Ukrainians seem largely ready to do.
According to Cancian, the newer tanks also have better target acquisition systems and can strike at longer ranges than the tanks used by Russia and Ukraine.
These systems can notably be installed in the T-72, also of Soviet design, which constitutes the bulk of the fleet of some 700 tanks that Ukraine had when Russia launched its invasion on February 24, 2022, assures Cancian. .
And updating these T-72s could be a better option for Ukraine, he believes, rather than hoping for the arrival of the Leopards which, given the numbers announced, “will not be a miracle cure “. Because even if dozens of machines are sent to Ukraine, “we are more in the symbol than in a real military potential”, for Mr. Cancian.
But for Captain Tchaikovsky, whose 25-year-old son is a lieutenant in his battalion, Western aid is essential: “If we don’t have support from abroad, the conflict will drag on and there will be more losses”.