RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Western tanks burn more fiercely than Soviet ones – Putin
Ukrainian troops are reluctant to make use of the heavy equipment supplied by Western backers, as it has become a liability, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
Western tanks are a priority target for Russian forces, and burn more fiercely than Soviet-made equivalents when hit, the president told the Rossiya 24 TV channel.
Russian troops have destroyed a total of 311 Ukrainian tanks since June 4, Putin said, adding that “at least a third of them, I believe, were Western-made tanks, including Leopards.”
“I can say that Ukrainian servicemen often refuse to get into those [Western] tanks because they are a top priority target for our guys and are being destroyed first on the battlefield. And they burn like the rest – probably even better than… the Soviet-made ones like T-72,” the Russian leader stated.
Further Western arms deliveries will not significantly help Kiev on the battlefield, Putin warned, adding that it “will only make the situation worse… for the Ukrainian side,” inflaming the conflict further. He added that some parties are deliberately trying to prolong the hostilities.
Russia has repeatedly stated that the Western-made tanks, which Kiev had largely reserved for its much-touted counteroffensive, would not be a game changer. As early as January, the Kremlin predicted that they would burn like the other weapons sent to Ukraine by the US and its allies.
The Ukrainian campaign, which was launched in early June, has so far failed to produce any tangible results. Kiev’s forces have suffered heavy losses while seeking to penetrate the Russian defences, while gaining little ground. In early July, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Ukraine’s fleet of German-made Leopard tanks was dwindling.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian commanders have been holding back their Western tanks after an initial failure to achieve significant battlefield successes.
** Wagner PMC formally non-existent, Putin says — media
Legalizing private military companies is a complicated issue that should be handled by the government and the parliament, because formally companies such as Wagner PMC are non-existent in Russia at this point, Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying.
Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov quoted the Russian president as saying in response to a question about the organization’s future that, from the point of view of the Russian legislation, "Wagner PMC does not exist."
The president explained that Russia has no law on private military companies and, therefore, "there is no such legal entity."
"The [Wagner] Group exists, but it is judicially non-existent," the report quotes Putin as saying. "The formal legalization is a separate issue that should be addressed by the State Duma [the lower chamber of the Russian parliament] and the government. It’s a complicated issue."
The president believes that the Wagner Group controversy "is very simple and clear for [members of] the Russian society."
"Wagner’s ordinary members were fighting with dignity… so it is very regrettable that they became embroiled into these events," Putin added.
On Thursday, the Russian president took part in the plenary session of the Future Technologies Forum. After the event was over, he had a conversation with Russian journalists. Excerpts of the talk, where the issue of Ukraine, NATO and the grain deal were raised, were published by the Kremlin website and aired by the Rosssiya-24 television channel.
WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine receives cluster munitions, pledges limited use
Ukraine has received cluster bombs from the United States, munitions banned in more than 100 countries, but has pledged to only use them to dislodge concentrations of enemy soldiers.
Valeryi Shershen, a spokesman for the Tavria, or southern, military district on Thursday confirmed an announcement by his commander that the weapons had arrived a week after the United States said it would send them as part of an $800-million security package.
The Pentagon also announced their arrival.
Moscow has denounced their shipment. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu warned on Thursday that Russia could resort to deploying similar weaponry if faced with their use.
Ukrainian officials say their deployment is justified in view of Russia's mining of vast tracts of land it has seized.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive more than 500 days into the war, focusing on capturing groups of villages in the southeast and retaking areas around the eastern city of Bakhmut, seized by Russian forces in May after months of fighting.
"This will further demotivate Russian occupying forces and fundamentally change things in favour of the Ukrainian armed forces," Shershen told U.S.-funded Radio Liberty.
The munitions, he said, would be used strictly within the legal framework, "only for the deoccupation of our territories.
"They will not be used on Russian territory...They will be used only in areas where Russian military forces are concentrated in order to break through enemy defences."
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy restated Ukraine's assurances during a NATO summit on Wednesday.
Cluster munitions typically release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area. Those that fail to explode pose a danger for decades.
Each side has accused the other of using cluster bombs in the conflict launched by Russia's invasion in February 2022.
Human Rights Watch says both Moscow and Kyiv have used cluster munitions. Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. have not signed up to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans production, stockpiling, use and transfer of the weapons.
The decision to send the munitions to Ukraine has been opposed by Spain and Canada, while Britain said it was part of a convention that discourages use of the weapons. Some U.S. Democratic lawmakers also raised their concerns.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleskander Musiyenko said he assumed the weapons would be used in the south as that area's commander had announced their arrival.
"We can say that it is in the south where it is planned to pierce and destroy the fortifications of the enemy's defence line," Musiyenko told Ukrainian television. "I think cluster munitions will expand the capabilities of our troops."
Deputy Ukrainian Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian troops were making headway in the south, forcing enemy forces to redeploy. Near Bakhmut, Ukrainian troops made gains south of the city, but faced more difficulties to the north.
Russian accounts of the fighting said its forces had repelled 16 Ukrainian attacks in eastern Donetsk region alone.
** Ground vehicles are the new frontier in Ukraine's drone war
After the role of unmanned aerial vehicles in the Ukraine war expanded dramatically since Russia invaded 16 months ago, attention is turning to ground drones that developers say could be the next frontier in military innovation.
Among the Ukrainian engineers working in the sector is 22-year-old Yevhen Hnatok, who said he had already supplied several dozen remote-controlled ground vehicles for the armed forces.
In a recent demonstration, a small green machine with chunky wheels and a landmine strapped to its back moved through long grass almost undetected.
"If they see it at this distance, they won't even have time to pray," he told Reuters, referring to Russian forces.
As more experimental technologies are introduced onto the battlefield, small-scale engineers like Hnatok are hoping to influence the war's outcome with Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) that carry weapons and explosives or conduct reconnaissance.
Russia, too, has invested in UGVs including combat robots, and Ukraine wants to counter that, as it has done in the aerial drone sphere, by encouraging innovation among small enterprises.
Hnatok's machines vary in size and capability: the smaller ones can carry an anti-tank mine or a remotely operated machine gun up to 10 km (6 miles) away from their operator, and he is working on a larger vehicle capable of carrying a 20mm cannon.
Other machines can transport artillery shells to gunners.
The young engineer said the goal was to replace as many troops as possible with machines on the frontlines in order to save lives.
One of the main challenges to Ukraine's ambitious summer counteroffensive has been the dense networks of anti-infantry and anti-tank mines laid by Russian troops. Losing an expendable UGV to a landmine is preferable to losing a soldier.
One advantage of UGVs is their low cost - the parts for Hnatok's smaller machines cost less than 30,000 hryvnias ($812).
The impact of combat UGVs from both sides has been extremely limited so far, according to Samuel Bendett, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
However, he said the UGV sector was one to watch, with well-educated and technologically adept volunteers, especially in Ukraine, scrambling to create new vehicles that would give their armies an advantage.
"It's this type of battlefield innovation at the tactical edge in Ukraine that's going to (bring about) eventual emerging solutions that can lend themselves to long-term survival in combat."
ARMS RACE
Ukraine's community of grassroots defence innovators is a smorgasbord of young IT professionals and older Soviet-educated aerospace and tank engineers. Hnatok, dressed in scruffy black clothes and punk rocker boots, is neither.
The engineer, who only completed nine years of school, said he learnt most of his skills in building remote-controlled vehicles from his stepfather.
"We would build little rockets together, things like that," he recalled.
Having taken part in combat near Kyiv and in eastern Ukraine in the first months of the invasion, Hnatok decided to start making UGVs in February, after he saw an online post showing off a Russian vehicle.
"I thought: 'why don't we start making them?'"
Hnatok said he does not profit from his vehicles, but asks his military buyers to cover production costs.
Combat footage posted online shows how Moscow has already deployed remotely operated versions of old tanks packed with explosives that are sent towards Ukrainian positions.
It is also working on higher-tech, self-driving options such as the Marker UGV, which has demonstrated AI and machine learning capabilities and has been able to traverse through controlled environments without an operator, said Bendett.
Of UGVs more broadly, he added: "The ultimate goal is to have these systems function autonomously in battle ... with human operators, UAVs, aerial and manned assets in a networked environment ... but we are far from that."
Hnatok said he was happy to make lots of cheap smaller UGVs, including single-use kamikaze vehicles, but that he would need more staff to fulfil existing orders.
The engineer said he also faced problems with parts supply, with components such as caterpillar tracks now retailing at inflated prices due to a global demand spike caused by the war.
"If before the war a transmitter cost 2,000 hryvnias, it now costs up to 12,000."
($1 = 36.9290 hryvnias)
RT/Tass/Reuters