Ukrainian airborne and armored troops on May 3 jointly engaged opposing NATO forces in southern Germany and damaged several hostile Abrams tanks in the course of battle.
Without sustaining heavy casualties, they later marched to an agreed point of rendezvous, mined all principal communications in the area and arranged an ambush to repel the enemy’s counter-attack with a rain of fire.
The Ukrainian attack on German territory was acknowledged successful.
Luckily, the May 3 clash was not a real combat but rather a mock battle between friendly formations during the Combined Resolve X military exercises at a firing range near the town of Hohenfels in Bavaria.
This year, Ukraine’s 14th Armored and 79 Airborne brigades, both being among the most elite combat formations in their branches of troops in Ukraine, participate in the multinational drills along with the forces of the United States, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Poland.
In 2018, the Combined Resolve X drills, held by U.S. Army Europe until May 12, involved some 3,700 troops.
The participating forces were split into two teams – the OPFOR (consisting of Ukraine, United States, Latvia, Romania, and Slovenia) and the BLUFOR (Albania, United States, Georgia, Poland and Bulgaria).
The OPFOR, assuming the role an attacking force on the drills’ first day , has Ukrainian T-84 tanks and BTR-80 carriers, along with M-84s (a Slovakian version of Soviet T-72 tanks) and 103 Spartan, MLI-84M, 107 Scimitar vehicles.
The BLUFOR team, the defending forces, is manned essentially with Western-built military hardware, including M1A2 Abrams tanks, and Rosomak and Bradley armored vehicles , and Paladin self-propelled artillery units.
