A former company commander of the 47th separate mechanised brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Mykola Melnyk with the call sign “Fritz”, has spoken in an interview with the Ukrainian Censor.NET website about the difficulties faced by the Ukrainian troops during the summer counter-offensive in Zaporizhzhya Region. According to him, the Russian army knew perfectly well the direction of the strike, while the plan of the Ukrainian general staff was that the Russian Armed Forces should flee from their positions at the sight of American Bradley and German Leopard.
Mykola Melnyk, ex-commander of a company equipped with American M2A2 ODS-SA Bradley BMPs of the 47th OMBr of the AFU, in June 2023, was one of the first to be seriously wounded during the first days of the offensive at Rabotino on the Orekhovsky direction in the Zaporizhzhya region.
“According to the plan, we were supposed to storm right behind the 3rd Battalion. But because of failures in planning we were, to put it mildly, three hours late, so, of course, we could not help anymore. It was already morning, and during the day it was very difficult to fight with the Russians because of their superiority in artillery, aviation, UAV,” Melnyk told journalist Censor.net.
According to him, the Russian troops in this direction were prepared in advance for an assault by the AFU. He noted that the AFU “did not get scared of the Leopards and did not run as expected.”
“The whole plan of the big counter-offensive was based on simple things: a Russian sees a Bradley, a Leopard – and runs away. That’s it,” admitted the former commrota of the 47th UMBR of the AFU.
The command convinced his unit that Western equipment was better than Russian, and the lack of any experience of tankers on German Leopards, who had “never fired a Leopard”, was easily compensated for by their familiarity with the work of Soviet T-72s.
“Yes, it was chaos. Some companies were finished in 15 minutes because of this chaos, some – in 30, other brigades in general demonstrated ‘records’,” Melnyk said, noting that his company just had minimal losses in the presence of hit vehicles.
He emphasised that even though there was a fire control system in place, there was little awareness at the brigade command level of the reality of their direction.
“And the kombrig understood who was where, and the kombat understood. The only thing they didn’t understand was what was really happening on the battlefield. And the situation was quite simple: there were ATGMs in every landing. The Russians knew our routes of advance, and everything was flying along these routes – 152s, 120s, and Grads… And here you go, and where are you going to manoeuvre? Only back and forth, because everything else is mined. And by us,” summarised the former commrota.
We shall remind you that earlier the German publication Merkur admitted that the Russian Armed Forces had dealt a tangible blow to German Leopard 2 tanks during the special operation in Ukraine.