Ivan the Colorado wrote:
Armor doesn't fair well at all when employed in a defensive role. Never has.
I beg to differ. History shows abundance of examples of what can do well emplaced tanks on the defense. Though I agree that is throwing away the mobility advantage, and rather that as mobile pillboxes armor should always be used in the attack, even on the defensive, but I have only get past the first pages of my Panzer Tactics book.
Due to the prevalence of artillery and the quantities of AT weapons also should help dissuade the large scale use of tanks.
Is really artillery that much of a concern? Tanks can sped quickly through impact zones and shrug off most fragments and you would need close hits by heavy artillery to damage tracks and roadwheels with large splinters.
You are closer to the mark with AT weapons. Apparently the reactive armor is of not use against tandem charge warheads, to the point some tanks got rid of it entirely, but others keep it. but the main AT weapon is the RPG. Antitank guided missiles are scarce, and both sides resorted to use obsolete antitank towed guns Rapira. Weakness of AT defense should invite to bold use of armor. Yet tanks have proven so vulnerable they are being used as self propelled guns, to lob HE shells from a safe distance beyond range of RPGs.
Even if tanks are vulnerable to AT weapons, that also happened in WWII and didn't preclude large scale armor attacks. Armor has always been more effective when used in concentration, no penny packets. To smash through an antitank defense screen you need numbers to overwhelm the AT weapons, some tanks will be lost but the breakthrough will be achieved. Attacking in small groups makes the enemy job easier.
So it is not much a matter of vulnerability of the tanks but on timidity and lack of training by the crews, as follows.
On that note, the larger use of tanks could prohibited somewhat by the lack of experience crews on either side.
Yes, specially on the Novorussian side. But the Ukranians do have a lot of tanks. They parade them up and down in response to crises, but they never engage more of a few.
Most successful usage of armor maybe from the vacationers back in August or February.
I don't believe in the "North Wind" there were never Russian combat units in Ukraine, except perhaps, as commanders and staff at HQ to coordinate the militia attacks during those operations. Instructors on the Russian side of the border and intelligence support, certainly. Advisors and staff, very likely. Special Ops commandos, maybe. Line units, certainly not.
That said, you raise an interesting possibility and one I also thought about. The militia infantry and artillery got the help of Russian tankers to operate their acquired armor, and perhaps artillerists as well. That would be a lot of easier to conceal than sending infantrymen, and not without precedent. The Soviet Union intervention in the Spanish Civil War took the form of pilots and tank crews.
I remember that somebody at MPnet posted a story about people in Donbass seeing a column of tanks and the tankers saying they were from Crimea. That would make a lot of sense. Former Ukranian army regular soldiers joining the militia as volunteers, either on their own or with Russia approval while technically not being Russiansnor compromising any Russian army units.
But I think the Novorussian militias deserve more credit than they are given. It's not just an army of peasants, miners and truck drivers, quite a number of ethnic Russians regular soldiers and police joined the militias, starting with the paratroopers that switched sides and joined the Slavyansk defenders. That would be enough to give the backbone to the militia. Giving credit to the mythical "North wind" in my opinion underestimates the militia and overestimates the Ukrops. The orks were so incompetent that even a ragtag militia could defeat them. Better armies than the Ukranian army of 2014 were routed by savages using ambushes and encirclements.