Russian troops stranded in the 40-mile long convoy of tanks and armoured vehicles stalled on the outskirts of Kyiv could face freezing to death in their vehicles this week as temperatures are set to plunge.
A pronounced cold snap in Eastern Europe will see temperatures drop to -10C overnight in the middle of the week around Kyiv and Kharkiv – down to -20C when wind chill is taken into account.
The icy conditions are expected to make a difficult situation even worse for the invaders, who have been stuck roughly 20 miles from Kyiv for days amid mechanical problems, fuel supply issues and solid Ukrainian resistance.
Former British Army Major Kevin Price said the occupiers’ tanks will become nothing more than ’40-ton freezers’ as the mercury drops, commenting that the bitter conditions will destroy the morale of troops not prepared for Arctic-style warfare.
Price declared that life for Russian soldiers not expecting to be confronted with such low temperatures in March is set to become ‘unbelievably tough’, while Glen Grant, a senior defence expert at the Baltic Security Foundation, said a tank ‘is just a fridge at night if you are not running the engine’ – something the Russians simply cannot afford to do given the fuel scarcity.
Grant said that unless the convoy is quickly supplied and is able to get moving again, many of the Russian soldiers may be forced to give up to avoid freezing to death.
‘You just can’t sit around and wait because if you are in the vehicle you are waiting to be killed. They are not stupid,’ he told Newsweek.
But the Arctic temperatures are also expected to make life miserable for Ukrainian refugees attempting to flee from war torn cities.
