By BRUSSELS. May 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Head of the NATO Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer believes that in the near future the difference between the Russian and Ukrainian armies on the battlefield will be that the Russians will focus on quantity, and the Ukrainians on quality, both in terms of equipment and personnel.
He expressed this opinion in Brussels on Wednesday at a press conference after a meeting of the chiefs of staff of NATO member countries, answering a question from journalists about the state of Russian troops. The head of the NATO Military Committee said that the Russians had started using very old equipment with very old capabilities. According to him, the number 54 of the T-54 tank, which can now be seen on the battlefield, is the year of production – 1954. And he thinks that the problem is that they have a lot of them. And the problem is in quantity, which is the problem. According to him, the Russians will focus on the number – more conscripts and mobilized, insufficiently trained, on old equipment, but in large numbers, which is inaccurate, not as good as new. And Ukrainians, he said, will focus on quality with weapons of Western systems and Western training (military). This is a big difference which will be seen in the coming months, he said.
Bauer also explained that each side in the war has the same problems: losses, broken or lost equipment, lack of ammunition. He said that one of the miscalculations of Russian operational or even strategic planning from the very beginning was that they thought it would be a three-day war, and they forgot to inform a number of performers about it – they had no logistics on the ground. After a few days, the tanks ran out of fuel, not because they had no fuel, but because it was in another place. Every war in 4-5 faces logistics problems. This is what can be seen in Ukraine, and it has to do with other problems: this is the ability of your community to produce everything that you have lost, such as ammunition, new vehicles, new ammunition, new tanks, a little less – new people, but this is a different production cycle, Bauer explained.
