As Russia's attack on Ukraine devolves into stalemate, capturing and repurposing abandoned Russian vehicles is one of the few ways Ukrainian defense forces can replenish their own supply of armor. NATO countries have been steadily shipping food, ammunition, and all-important drones and anti-armor missiles, but if Ukrainian forces want new Soviet-designed armor themselves the best place to get it is from Russia's own supply lines.
CNN has a intriguing look inside a Ukrainian depot responsible for repainting, repairing and refitting captured Russian armor. And it's not just armor that's being borrowed; a Ukrainian deputy commander boasts of the 24 captured Russian missiles his team delivered to the Ukrainian defense.
"We captured them intact, gave them to the Armed Forces of Ukraine at night and now the Ukrainian army has fired missiles back at them," he told CNN.
Much of the captured equipment is old, dating to the Soviet era, but the commander calls it "quite reliable" and so similar to Ukraine's own equipment that soldiers need little new familiarization. Some vehicles will be pressed into serving different roles than they were originally designed for. But an especially noteworthy tidbit is the deputy commander's assertion that his battalion isn't just tasked with repurposing captured Russian gear—they're also the ones doing the capturing, hunting Russian supply columns in what sounds suspiciously like tactical shopping trips:
"We shot at the first vehicle, and when it exploded the column stopped. (Russian soldiers) ran away and we took their military equipment."
That's the nightmare scenario for Russian troops already reeling from incompetent military management. Not only are supply lines regularly being harassed and stopped cold, compounding the problems of Russian frontline positions, but at least some percentage of the supplies being shipped are being swiftly transferred to the Ukrainian teams working against them.
There's little chance Russian kleptocrat Vladimir Putin can win his war of conquest. There's not much of a chance that the far smaller Ukrainian army can methodically push Russian troops back across their borders using offensive force. The possibility that Ukraine can dish out the sort of steady military damage that a sanctioned Russia cannot indefinitely sustain, however, should not be discounted.
