David Axe, Forbes.
The 1st Tank Brigade, arguably Ukraine’s best tank formation, didn’t just survive the brutal bombardment that preceded Russia’s wider invasion of Ukraine starting the early morning of Feb. 24.
The brigade fought back—hard.
The 1st Tank Brigade’s six-week defense of the city of Chernihiv, near the border with Belarus just 60 miles north of Kyiv, already was the stuff of legend when analysts Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds revealed incredible new details in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Russian commanders apparently assumed the 1st Tank Brigade would be an easy target on day one of the wider war. In the early morning hours of Feb. 24, Russian missiles and artillery struck the permanent garrisons of most of the Ukrainian army’s 20 or so active brigades.
But these brigades, including the 1st Tank Brigade, had dispersed. The Russian bombardment mostly destroyed empty buildings.
The 1st Tank Brigade’s 2,000 troopers and roughly 100 T-64B and T-64BM tanks—some of the best tanks in the Ukrainian inventory—lay in wait in the fields and forests surrounding Chernihiv.
The Russian 41st Combined Arms Army barreled south from its staging areas around the Belarus-Russia border, quickly arriving at Chernihiv. On paper, the 41st CAA with its 20,000 troops and hundreds of T-72 tanks vastly outmatched the 1st Tank Brigade.
Read more: forbes.com
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