Page 247 - Armor News Today

With explosives, and theres been a lot of ukrainian heavy armor and troops heading toward the front. now, i can hear the air raid siren in the background. its been going on all night. but oddly enough in this town, kramatorsk, we didnt hear the normal sort of background sounds of thuds, distant thuds all night. so it does appear that perhaps the russians are focusing their fire on the front line as opposed to some of the back positions to the rear that theyve been hitting since weve been here fo...

Donbas will look different from what weve seen in the war. a lot has been urban warfare, guerilla fighting. this will be a set piece combat. explain what it means. will this be tanks lined up? what sort of numbers are we talking about, what sort of artillery will be used? >> think about the revenge of geography. in other words you can change a lot of things on the battlefield, you cant chapg the terrain. thus, as you point out, jonathan, out of the cities, on to the plains of ukraine. it is a va...

Used? >> think about the revenge of geography. in other words, you can change a lot of things on a battlefield. you cant change the terrain. thus, as you point out correctly, jonathan, out in the cities, onto the plains of ukraine. its a vast -- think kansas. and as a result of that, that armor can move both the tanks, the armored personnel carrier, and yes what the russians envision is a sweeping set-piece kind of battle like we havent seen since the second world war. well see, a, if they can d...

Airpower and those are the key things they are going to use to, quote, soften up some of the targets. along this very long line here, only known to russia, they have selected probably several points where are they are going to try to make penetrations in. so one of the things we will see after this softening up here, which could be anywhere from one to three days is that then some of this russian armor that you just refer today will probably try to start making a breakthrough. their intent would...

Expects, and what russians are planning for is a major conventional war to try to control the area from crimea to donbas. and i think it will go on for weeks, maybe even longer. >> jeremy, we reported on the u.s. training ukrainian troops, actually, training the trainers on american artillery. lets talk particularly about these howitzers. how important are they? could they be in the fight for eastern ukraine? >> yeah, they give the ukrainians about 10 to 20 miles worth of range with those hundre...

Artillery as well. and then in the easte country this is perhaps where the fighting is most intense. in the kharkiv region, particularly kharkiv city itself, theres been shelling in the central and residential areas which were told has injured 20, killed five in the last day or so. and then in the luhansk region there are towns and villages that are almost under constant bombardment even though these are purely residential areas and theres not much of them left. such has been the bombardment in ...

Still not fully under russian control at this hour. that official says a chilling new phase is about to begin, saying that beginning tomorrow russian forces will block anyone from entering or fleeing the city and that the remaining men will be, quote, filtered out. cnn cannot independently verify the claims. but colonel, as russias war shifts, what do you expect to see in the east? >> yeah, this is going to be very interesting. the first phase of the war taught us a couple of things. one, we lea...

Thats why the ukrainians had a victory in the north on the encirclement of kyiv. now the nature of the conflict thats coming is a large war of maneuver forces, and during this struggle, they need different kinds of equipment that they dont really have. i do remind people, though, that the manpower confrontation is essentially the ratio is one-on-one. the ukrainians do have a lot of soviet-era armor that theyre putting into action. what they need now, though, is a qualitative difference. theyve g...

The east, it is going to a battle -- this is not going to kick off for another month or so. remember, it is warming there. theres mud. that means russian armor is tied down to roads. this is going to be a very slow battle. i think what we want to watch is how quickly can ukrainian military can take all of the new weaponry theyre getting in, push it to this front and can they hold off another armored advance on another set of cities in the east. >> the question is obviously mariupol is so importa...

Making the total 76 now. what does that mean? i mean what does that mean now that ukraine is up against? are they equipped for it? >> it means first of all that theyre reducing the size of the massing of their attack, kate. what i mean by that is theyre in the first phase of the war. you had russian forces going in around the eastern part and the north and south of ukraine about 1400 miles. but you now have in the area is anywhere from about 250 to 300 miles of a frontage. russia will be able to...