The experts say they are better on defense because they can concentrate massive artillery and sow many mines. It takes tanks for offense and even defense on the open country they will be fighting in with few urban areas. The Ukrainians are scrambling for enough tanks to meet the onslaught in a few weeks. I don't think the Russians can field as many tanks as on paper, many were stored with no maintenance and were pilfered for anything of value over decades of corruption.
I’m certainly not an expert: not a veteran, not paid by military contractors, not an ex-general. I do pretty well with research, though, and assessments on the ground in Ukraine seem to me to contradict your experts: the tanks you speak of in storage have no ENGINES, no GUNS, no communications - sold on eBay, if one can believe it…and I’ve been SEEING the Russian military “surplus” on eBay for years; *some* experts are convinced that maybe 10% of the “stored” tanks may be made serviceable - with enough time and money and now-scarce parts…but it might be more effective for them to build new ones. Don’t know if it’s true that top-end Russian armor is *made* in Ukraine, but it will take them a decade or more to replace what they’ve lost in the last 5 weeks - if they can afford to replace them.
Their “defense” so far in this war amounts to getting stranded and blown up, captured and killed like the sitting ducks they have so often been. Beyond that, their defense has been a Vince Lombardy-style offense - as the horrific shelling of towns, villages, and cities show in excruciating clarity. Destroying civilian targets isn’t DEFENSE. Murdering and kidnapping civilians at will and at large isn’t DEFENSE. It’s war at its worst - and at it’s LEAST DEFENSIBLE.
As for Ukraine’s forces, yes they want offensive weapons - and yes, they want more tanks, etc: THEY WANT DRIVE RUSSIA OUT.
Out of the Donbas, out of Crimea. OUT. Can’t do that with small arms. Zelenskyy is no idiot, he’s not happy playing defense, hoping the invaders get tired & go home - he wanted to mount a Ukrainian offensive to all shovel the crap out of the country - for that, UA will require more & bigger weapons & faster replacement as they’re consumed. US just signed up to back Ukraine
for the duration, declaring that the war began with the occupation of Crimea.
Zelenskyy isn’t short on defense, he wants to ATTACK and push them OUT
The plan will most likely punish them when they attack and fall back to a series of ambushes while pounding their advance down the road with IED every 100 feet and artillery swamping columns of armor. They know their plan, their timetable and the roads they will use and can prepare every inch of ground that they will kill them on when they advance. Once they are worn down and far from their logistic bases, they will counter attack and roll them back if it's easy, or not if it's hard. The Russians will pay for their advance in blood and equipment. There will be a lot of war criminals and murders among them and the Ukrainians will want to kill as many of them as they can. With all the extra switchblade killer drones going in, I expect most of the Russian officers to be targeted and assassinated, they will be a priority target and their loss will paralyze the Russians.
The first inch of the paragraph is hard to parse: you seem to be using ‘they’ to refer to both Russian and Ukrainian forces without really signifying which one you refer to at any moment. That said, if there’s a Russian plan, it seems to amount to blowing everything to bits, killing as any as possible, maybe have a few returning heroes to pin medals on.
A specific point: the Russians have already lost more troops and more material in 5 weeks than the US has - total - since Vietnam. They‘ve ALREADY paid a staggering price in blood and equipment for parking privileges…in order to actually ADVANCE, they could lose the Russian army itself, and Still not accomplish more than murdering as many as possible.
They’ll pay dearly for that, too.
If they don't have a way of dealing with Ukrainian drone attacks of several different kinds, they will lose a third of their armor to night time attacks at least. Another thing, the Ukrainians now have lot's of night vision equipment and the Russians have none, they sleep at night, or used to, because small forces can attack them during the night and make it so they can't get any sleep. The Ukrainians will attack them at night too, they can see in the dark and owning the night is important.
This last bit amounts to them staying in the same quagmire that’s astonished the world, with only destruction to gain.
Imma call this finished, Brain is too tired now.