Former US adviser advises Ukraine to send Soviet tanks to Russian minefields

According to RT, Dan Rice - a former American advisor to Kiev's senior generals - has proposed that, as Ukraine's counteroffensive stalls, the country should rely on its old Soviet tank arsenal to penetrate Russia's first lines of defense, while retaining tanks provided by the West.

Specifically, in an interview with Newsweek published on August 22, Mr. Dan Rice said that Russia's vast minefields are among the main obstacles facing Ukrainian soldiers. It is known that Mr. Rice previously served as an advisor to Valery Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and is currently serving as president of the American University in Kiev.

The former adviser said that older tanks such as the Soviet-era T-64 were “more worth sacrificing” when penetrating Russia’s outer defenses. He also noted that German-made Leopard tanks and US-designed M1 Abrams could join the fight after Ukrainian troops penetrated Russian lines. Although Kiev has deployed Leopard tanks, the Abrams are not expected to arrive in Ukraine until early fall, RT reported.

“You wouldn't risk your best tanks going through areas that were known to be minefields,” Rice explained.

Meanwhile, commenting on Kiev's combat tactics, Marina Miron, a postdoctoral fellow at King's College London's war studies department, told Newsweek that Ukraine "tried using Leopard tanks and got stuck in minefields... This was a bitter lesson for Ukrainian forces."

In early June, Ukraine launched a counterattack against Russian positions after being reinforced by hundreds of heavy Western tanks and other weapons. However, according to Moscow, Kiev has so far failed to gain significant ground. In early August, the Russian Defense Ministry estimated that since the start of the counterattack, Ukraine has suffered more than 43,000 casualties.

Ukraine also suffered heavy losses in military equipment. Moscow claims to have destroyed nearly 5,000 vehicles, including at least 25 Leopard tanks and 21 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

In mid-July, the New York Times reported that Ukraine had lost about 20 percent of the equipment it sent to the battlefield. A Wall Street Journal report published around the same time said that Kiev’s donors were “shocked” by the rate of losses.

Officials in Kiev have acknowledged the difficulties of their counteroffensive, pointing to factors such as fierce Russian resistance, a lack of air power, Western delays in supplying weapons, and the formidable defenses and minefields that Moscow had laid in the weeks before Kiev's offensive.