Ulara
Thank you, dear friends, for your kind hospitality! 🇺🇦❤️🇪🇺
The Siberian battalion consists mostly of people "from ethnic minorities from Russia's far east". Modern Russia is a huge quasi-empire, with Muscovy oppressing all the colonized nations and regions. Ukrainians, being formerly colonized, feel with all the oppressed nations and support their fight for freedom.
That's why Ukrainians actively support the "Free Nations League" https://freenationsleague.org/ and this Siberian battalion. Imperialism is deeply ingrained in the flesh and bones of Muscovy, so Ukrainians are wary of it.
Muscovy destroyed the democracies of the medieval republics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Republic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pskov_Republic
Ukrainians have way more in common with these democracies, which were the closest allies of the ancient Kyiv state, than with Muscovy, which has always sought to oppress and enslave Ukraine.
Whatever Muscovy says, it will inevitably seek to oppress due to the law of "imperial boomerang" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
We can be true friends only with free people of independent nations.
Thank you for your compassion. The main thing is that F-16s will soon be here to protect the Ukrainian skies.
Thank you for your kindness. Ukraine is in indeed subjected to daily attacks. Fortunately most of the missiles are shot down, but air raids in the middle of the night or at any time of the day are stressful.
I have a nice place to live in Ukraine, but many refugees have nowhere to return to.
Ukraine is not safe these days, and many Ukrainians have nowhere to return to.
Why do you think so? All of the Ukraine's territory is under daily attacks. People in Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa live in daily stress of air raids. It's inhuman to discount this as statistics.
Well, you probably know more about tanks than I do. But sorry, this article isn't about making tanks completely immune. It is about improving protection. To quote the article:
ERA blocks contain layers of explosives that explode outward when struck, potentially deflecting the incoming blast. Reactive armor doesn’t work against inert penetrating rounds, but against high-explosive rounds it can roughly double a tank’s protection.
With a tight layer of ERA, a Leopard 1A5 should go from having around 70 millimeters of steel protection to the equivalent of 140 millimeters or so. That’s still less protection than a Russian T-72 has, but it’s enough at least to give Ukrainian crews more confidence as they roll onto battlefields teeming with explosive-laden drones and anti-tank missiles.
You write:
Use them in a supportive role as a precise gun on range (and as it's rifled it is actually more capable in regards to long range precision than modern smooth-bore cannons).
Indeed, the Ukrainians use them as accurate long-range guns. But as for the "supporting role", what other tanks should these Leopards support? Perhaps Ukraine will miraculously receive or make hundreds of modern battle tanks in the future. But for now, the Ukrainians must do the best they can with what they have, upgrading old vehicles where possible.
Well, you can, but first you should learn more about these tanks: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/11/19/ukraines-leopard-1-tanks-roll-toward-the-front-line-but-without-extra-armor/
If you care to read a purely Ukrainian weapon expert, David Axe, in the purely Ukrainian Forbes magazine :-)
In case of paywall: https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-vladimir-putin-war-machine-ruble-ukraine-sanctions-oil-2023-12