“We’re tired of fighting Putin with rubbish kit”. This recent headline in The Times was an eloquent expression of the feelings of a Ukrainian tank sergeant, part of the 24th Mechanised Brigade fighting in Bakhmut in the country’s east. “Spider” Bogdan, whose Soviet-era T-62 had ground to a halt, dreams of a more modern tank: “"Would we like to have a Challenger instead? What do you think? It would be a gift from the heavens.”
Bogdan’s T-62 had apparently seen action in Afghanistan 40 years ago and – like so much of the military hardware that Ukraine has depended on in fighting against the Russians in the Donbas since 2014 – is falling apart.
But the sergeant’s dream may be about to be realised if he is among one of the lucky crews to get their hands on one of the Challenger 2 tanks that the UK has promised to send as a matter of priority. The UK’s military aid package is part of a massive push by Nato countries to get more modern and sophisticated weapons to Kyiv that is also likely to include German Leopard 2 and the US Abrams as well as modern US infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), crucial in what is known as “combined arms warfare”, where infantry and armour combine to form effective and fast-moving fighting units.
