Gernot Kramper (star) At the moment there is no indication that either side thinks he will take a break for half a year. Especially not the Ukrainians. And that’s certainly a challenge for both sides now that they have troops in the field that they absolutely must have winter gear. At -30 -40 degrees you can’t come out of a hut and touch any metal object with your bare hand. The skin just freezes off immediately.
Hendrik Holdmann (star) Now the cold seasons are just around the corner. How will war change through winter?
Gernot Kramper (star) So first of all the wet seasons are coming again. That movements are becoming more difficult in general – and we actually thought that it would be after October, i.e. when the idea that the war cools down – we can’t see that at all at the moment. So that’s how. We see the Ukrainian offensive, another one has been announced, which has to come later. And we can also see that the Russians can certainly point to successes. They continue to advance in the Donbass. It’s all very small. A giant factory is then conquered from the gym, so to speak. But it’s a very fierce fight if you look at it. And overall, the war is more intense and associated with greater casualties than in the previous months. At least that’s my impression of what you can see from the video material. And we all expected there to be more of a cooldown in winter. But at the moment when both sides step up so much, you can’t see it at the moment, because war can also be waged in winter. In particular, one has to say that the real difficulty for wars in Ukraine are the transitional periods, so to speak, autumn and spring, when the muddy season occurs in Ukraine, that the ground is extremely loose and you only drive on the roads, so to speak can. Because you disappear into everything else. And when it comes to the streets, you have to say that you practically only have the streets in the normally built-up area. But then these field and forest paths also dissolve. So that means: This hinders the fighting action to certainly. But at the moment there is no indication that either side thinks he will take a break for half a year, especially the Ukrainians. In this respect, I would not expect such a strong cooling of the fighting. The winters are cooler there, but not every winter is like Moscow in 1940 or 1941, with temperatures of -40 degrees. And at the moment, the Russians are not trusted at all. But one must also say at this moment I have to remind people of two major Soviet offensives in which Ukrainians were also involved, namely the Russian counterattack in front of Moscow and Operation Uranos, which led to the strangulation of the sixth army in Stalingrad has led. Both operations have been performed in extreme cold and that is apparently possible. This hinders many things, especially when there is no winter gear. And that’s certainly a challenge for both sides now that they have troops in the field that they absolutely must have winter gear. And the Ukrainians certainly don’t have it on this scale. And probably not the Russians either. But you don’t know if they still have old sleeping bags from the USSR, i.e. such old material, somewhere. They seem to keep everything. But basically there are also battles with large operations in extreme cold – there was definitely a Second World War. Or if you remember that the Americans advanced far in North Korea in the Korean War, the Chinese also chose a moment of extreme cold for the counterattack. This has more to do with geographical situations and not with the cold now. But it didn’t stop either side, even if it changes the movement and, above all, the use of the material is of course very difficult. So you have to say clearly, at -30 -40 degrees you can’t come out of a hut and touch any metal object with your bare hand, your skin will just freeze to death immediately. So that’s how. It’s complicated, but so far it hasn’t slowed down the wars.