How do you actually attack the enemy?

The entire length of the front line is about 2,500 kilometers. The Russian army does not need to reinforce part of this line, because rivers, swamps and mountains are a natural barrier. Additional reinforcements were placed on weak points at the front: trenches, anti-tank ditches, barbed wire, and anti-aircraft guns.

The Ukrainian army is trying to attack these places, but so far it is going slowly. “It’s going slower than would be desired,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told a BBC interviewer, with slight irritation in his voice. “Some people think this is a Hollywood movie and expect instant results. This isn’t it.”

The offensive proceeds over about five phases, say Olaf Brink, a cavalryman (soldiers who work with tanks) who works on the Army Staff, and Ivor Wiltenberg, an infantryman attached to the Defense Academy. Brink was a squadron commander in the last Dutch tank battalion, which was disbanded in 2011 due to budget cuts. They maintain that they do not know the exact situation in Ukraine, but in general something can be said about the (theoretical) strategy behind the attack, from the brigade’s perspective. This is the smallest military unit consisting of different parts: tanks, soldiers and logistics units. They say that the battle tactics at the front are actually the same as a hundred years ago. Only the use of modern means makes fights different.