The Ukrainians have made it clear they won’t surrender Odessa without a fight. Its defense is the responsibility of an experienced mechanized brigade that has spent eight years fighting in Donbas.
In wartime, the brigade—which includes three BMP battalions, a battalion of infantry in trucks, a T-64 battalion and attached artillery and engineers—would get help from the army’s southern theater-level task force. An unreinforced battalion usually includes around 50 armored vehicles and up to 400 soldiers.
The theater task force organized its own counterinvasion exercise back in December. Naval infantry practiced defending a beach against an amphibious assault while 152-millimeter, towed howitzers and rocket-launchers provided fire support.“They are training to resist Russia’s possible full-scale aggression,” the defense ministry noted.
The Kremlin has massed along the border with Ukraine thousands of armored vehicles and other equipment for up to 200,000 troops. The supporting artillery is particularly awesome—hundreds of howitzers, rocket-launchers and ballistic missiles. Even with help from theater forces the local reservist brigade, the 28th Mechanized Brigade—just a few thousand soldiers strong—surely would be outnumbered in the event Russia makes a serious play for Odessa.
Russian brigades could roll west from nearby occupied Crimea and separatist-controlled Donbas while a Crimea-based naval infantry brigade, riding in the Black Sea Fleet’s landing vessels, storms ashore along southern Ukraine’s steep beaches. The Russians surely would control the sea, the air and
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