The West only understood late that Putin wants to win. Military expert Gustav Gressel explains what has changed since then and why a Rheinmetall truck is almost as valuable to Ukraine as HIMARS and the Gepard anti-aircraft tank.

ntv.de: A year of war confirms what many experts say: there is no such thing as a silver bullet, the teamwork has to work in order to be successful. Still, do you see any pivotal points in the last year that you say, “at that particular moment, that particular weapon system was crucial”?

Gustav Gressel: Of all the systems that were delivered, HIMARS certainly stands out as one of the most important.

HIMARS, the US multiple rocket launcher, which the Ukrainians received with rockets flying 80 kilometers. They can send them far behind the front lines. That helped a lot in late summer, didn’t it?

HIMARS has forced the Russians to reorganize all their logistics chains. Larger camps had to move them further and further away from the front line to protect them from the missiles. This hampered and slowed them down tremendously, making all fire support more difficult and problematic for the Russian side.

HIMARS is now also a threat against Russian reserves. This makes it much more complicated to gather forces behind the front line before an attack without being fired upon immediately. Among all the weapon systems delivered, HIMARS is one of the most important. The cheetah should not be underestimated either.

The German anti-aircraft tank, aiming at whatever flies through the air.

The cheetah is the second device that has some kind of special status in Ukraine, although there are only a few, 32 pieces now. The accuracy of the cannon is very high, and the Russians do not manage to electronically jam the cheetah. If the cheetah goes along with a Ukrainian attack, it can bring down the Russian reconnaissance drones. The cheetah can even see very small, funky drones and hit them quite well. Then the Russians don’t get to know exactly where the Ukrainians are attacking and where artillery fire would have to be fired at them to repel it. Many of the worries that Ukrainians have in an attack are superfluous when the cheetah is at the start.

Hasn’t the Bundeswehr already retired him?

It was eliminated in Germany because it was too expensive and supposedly no longer up-to-date. Whoever signed that back then is probably kicking their ass now.

Do Western arms deliveries always get through to their destination?

The Russians have tried numerous times to attack arms shipments from the West. Halls and hangars are attacked, but often at the wrong time. Weapons may have been stored there two weeks earlier, but nothing was left in there at the time of the attack, for two reasons: The Russians have a problem evaluating the information they receive, for example via satellites, in a timely manner. And the Ukrainians are extremely mobile. A truck from Rheinmetall helps them, and that would be my third weapon alongside HIMARS and Gepard that makes a difference in this war.

A miracle truck.

The great thing about the truck is its automatic container loading system. This means I can load the container relatively quickly, transport it somewhere and unload it again. This is perfect for the logistics of the Ukrainians, who never operate a large warehouse anywhere, but handle everything flexibly and mobile. They move weapons, ammunition, spare parts, fuel, always in small doses, decentralized and via different routes. This German truck is ideal for this, because it’s incredibly fast. And good logistics is an important factor in war.

You made a suggestion last fall that Western countries should join forces to supply Leopard tanks. With a delay of almost half a year, this is actually happening. After a year, is the West slowly coming to terms with the challenge of war?

We’re just catching up. In the first half of 2022, there were still great hopes in the West that negotiations would take place as soon as the Russian offensive power was exhausted. In April, US President Biden did not speak of victory, of the Russians being thrown out or of a complete restoration of territorial integrity. He and many others, actually the whole political rhetoric, except for the Balts, sounded like this: Russia must avoid a victorious peace and Ukraine must enter negotiations soon with strength.

Then, in late summer, the Russian offensive power was indeed weakened.

But instead of showing willingness to negotiate, Putin mobilized and annexed four occupied territories. As a result, we’ve seen a shift in Western targeting in the Fall/Winter.

What exactly has changed?

In all previous phone calls that Biden, Scholz and Macron had had with Putin, they always tried to warn him: Don’t annex! Under no circumstances annex, that makes any negotiated solution even more unlikely. But Putin became even more stubborn, he didn’t get involved with anything. The last thread of conversation was the trip to Istanbul in November by William Burns, the director of the CIA, the American secret service. In Turkey he met his Russian colleague, the head of the secret service Sergei Naryshkin, and Russian negotiators. Everyone is said to have said in unison to Burns: “Putin is going for victory.”

“Forget negotiations”?

That’s what they said. And Putin had already annexed and mobilization was underway.

So Putin’s actions reflected what the negotiators said: “He’s going for victory.”

I think that’s when the penny dropped in Washington. Then the USA understood that there would be no negotiations and decided to deliver the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

The decision for the Bradley was only announced recently, in January.

Yes, but they are already delivering, the tanks are ready to go in Germany. If you calculate how much time it takes to get a tank that was in the depot ready for use, then it fits in time. Then Washington could have decided in November that Ukraine must also be strengthened on the offensive. So that she can really kick out the Russians and they’ll start talking.

What we will see in the coming weeks then already corresponds to the changed attitude of the West?

Exactly. Over the winter the change in Western objective has taken place, now as the year progresses we will see how it is materially underpinned. However, I have to say that Boris Pistorius is relatively quick with what he has collected and put together. praise to the minister.

With all the support from the West, the Ukrainians have to fight. Would any European army, beyond the Russian one, be able to do what Kiev’s troops are capable of?

There are unique selling points of the Ukrainian army: One is: it is big. Apart from the Russian one, it is above all the largest land army in Europe. The pre-war army, before February 24, 2022, already consisted of 27 standing brigades. It’s now over 60 brigades, but the cadres, the command facilities to have such a large structure, were already there.

For comparison: How many brigades does the Bundeswehr have?

If we include the German-French and the German-Dutch: ten.

But structures like those in Ukraine do not exist in any other European army. Because Ukraine has been at war in Donbass for eight years. You have built up an enormous wealth of experience and prepared yourself for a major invasion. Simply because Ukraine had to reckon with it.

The Bundeswehr is said to have ammunition supplies for a few days. How was it in Ukraine?

She had six weeks’ supply of ammunition at the start of the war. And even if it was ammunition for old, bad, Soviet weapons – she could shoot for six weeks. Another point is specific to this war: the Ukrainians have their backs to the wall. They saw in Bucha what is happening to their compatriots. When their own existence is at stake, even small states surpass themselves. That would probably apply to any army.

Frauke Niemeyer spoke to Gustav Gressel