- Ukraine tried attacking with big columns of armored vehicles — but it was a disaster so it stopped.
- Russia, meanwhile, repeatedly deployed the same bad strategy, an expert told Business Insider.
Russia failed to realize a crucial element of its tank strategy was failing, an expert told Business Insider.
The error caused it huge losses — and is all the more striking because Ukraine had already made the same mistake, only to quick fix it.
The tactic in question was deploying tanks in large groups — an armored column — in the hope of smashing through enemy lines.
Riley Bailey, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War think tank, said the Russian side took much longer to realize this and stop doing it than the Ukrainians did.
Both sides, Bailey said, found that "attacking prepared positions with armored vehicles, specifically in columns of armored vehicles" has failed.
Both nations have powerful weapons that can counter such advances, leaving the tanks destroyed.
The columns are especially easy to thwart because it's obvious when an attack is coming — flat, open ground leaves few places to hide, and drones are constantly watching.
But while Ukraine quickly changed its tactics to stop using columns, Russia took much longer to do so.
It was particularly evident, Bailey said, in Russia's intense push to capture the town of Avdiivka.
Russia's losses in Avdiivka have been huge: US intelligence said last month that Russia lost more than 220 tanks and 13,000 men since it launched an offensive there in October.
Russia has inched forward without making decisive breakthroughs — and at an enormous cost.
Only in the past few weeks has Russia shifted to attacking instead with infantry around Avdiivka, leaving more vehicles behind.
It was a switch Ukraine made itself much earlier in the year, after heavy losses at the start of its summer counteroffensive, Bailey noted.
"Russian forces obviously saw Ukrainians make that switch during the counteroffensive, and it produced results. But they didn't internalize that, and they also haven't internalized their own mistakes with this."
In fact, he said Russia made the same mistake more than once just in Avdiivka. It suffered losses, paused to recover and regroup in early November, and then did the same thing again to even bigger losses.
Russia "lost much more personnel, much more armored vehicles in that wave of assaults" than the first time round, Bailey said.
It was only around late December, he said, that Russia was "kind of starting to try to switch over to something kind of resembling what the Ukrainians did."
Bailey noted that Russia already had other cautionary experiences with tank columns earlier in the war.
Ukraine learned from its mistakes fast
There are no verified numbers for Ukraine's losses around the time its counteroffensive was trying to make columns work.
But footage emerged of destroyed Ukrainian equipment, clearly showing that something wasn't going right.
Counteroffensive in full swing: Russian army destroyed another column of Ukrainian military equipment
— S p r i n t e r (@Sprinter99800) July 9, 2023
At least ten armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including tanks and Western armored vehicles of the MRAP class, were destroyed during one of the episodes of the… pic.twitter.com/mfGs7nj7dQ
US and European officials said that in just two weeks Ukraine lost up to 20% of the gear it fielded.
Russian war bloggers "gleefully amplified" reports of Ukraine losing its Western equipment, Bailey said.
"But quickly, the Ukrainians learned that that wasn't going to be successful, that these mechanized assaults on these prepared Russian defensive positions weren't going to really gain them territory," Bailey said.
Ukraine changed tack and "started relying on a mix of small infantry groups and a mix of infantry with less armored vehicle support and effort to stem vehicle losses."
No reports of mass Ukrainian tank and vehicle losses have emerged since.
That was Ukraine's first time "trying to conduct mechanized assaults on a prepared defensive position like this," Bailey said.
Ukraine could be seen to "very quickly pivot" afterwards to a mix of small infantry groups and a mix of infantry and armored vehicles.
Some Ukrainian soldiers said the way they were trained by the West was to blame for the losses.
Bailey speculated that Russia may not have learned its lesson about the armored columns for good.
He said it may deploy them again when winter conditions freeze the ground and make it more passable for heavy weaponry.