Afaik, the K2 has never entered the Italian Army’s radar, unlike, for example, the Abrams or even the Merkava, which were discarded due to their weight, price, location of production (domestic production is an essential requirement), different operational deployment scenarios and, linked to this, lack of common views on developing a joint project for a new tank with Israel, which had been discussed in the past. Relatively contained weight proportioned to agility is important requirement for the Italian Army, especially after the end of the Cold War. Moreover, Italy prefers to develop industrial-military relations with other European nations, also looking ahead to future developments of the coming decades.

It’s almost certain at this point that the Army will move towards 125 Ariete C2s + 125 Leopard 2A8s with the reactivation of a fourth tank regiment, in the process of bringing the “Granatieri di Sardegna” Brigade up to full operational capability. Regarding IFVs, the favourite in military circles seems to be the Lynx. There were even talks of 600ish units, although this seems like a lot considering that most of the mechanized brigades run on wheeled Freccia IFVs.

In the past two weeks the 83rd VDV Brigade and now the 98th Division have arrived in the Bakhmut sector, confirming the rumors of recent weeks about the 98th rushing there from Kreminna. The latter seems to have been deployed in Berkhivka and in the Dubovo-Vasylivka salient, relieving the 200th Brigade of the Arctic fleet. Regarding VDV, let’s remind that the 106th Division has been very active in Bakhmut/Soledar since January (and elements of the division were flagged in September in the area!), the 31st Brigade since May and the 11th Brigade since mid-June.

At this point just the 76th Division in Kreminna and the 7th Division on the other side of the Dnipro River in Kherson remain outside of Bakhmut (I would group the 45th Brigade in the Tokmak sector with the Spetsnaz GRU rather than the VDV). I think it has been since the push towards Kyiv that there were not so many VDV units concentrated in one place (although at the time they were far more manned and fresh). This tells us, basically, that: Russia considers Bakhmut to be a very important city that they cannot afford to lose; the loss of the city, or more realistically the flanks right now, is a possibility they consider more than realistic; they don’t have (as they are deployed elsewhere) and/or don’t trust for this task the other Army’s brigades/regiments, let alone the mobilized units, or it would not make sense to deploy their best troops in a defensive operation, however competent they could be. This also makes me think they aren’t preparing an offensive action elsewhere, with so many of their best troops concentrated in Bakhmut. Even so, it’s always good to keep an eye on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line where the formations of the Western and Central Military Districts are concentrated. The best tanks Russia can churn out seem to be destined to them - for instance, I was seeing that the 90th Tank Division has recently been equipped with a batch of T-90Ms as well as T-80BVs - an upgrade over the T-72A/Bs they fielded in 2022.

Back in Bakhmut: everything is happening without huge offensive efforts from the Ukrainian side: most of the work seems to be done, judging from the videos, by the 3rd and 5th Assault Brigades and the worn-out 28th Mech in the south and the 30th Mech and 57th Motorized in the north. The 67th Mech appears to have been transferred to other sectors while brigades employed in the past months in the urban defense of Bakhmut, which suffered significant losses, such as the 93rd Mech and 77th Air Assault are still active in the area. North of Soledar, in the sector of the 10th Mountain Brigade, a battalion from the 54th Mech Brigade seems to have come down from Spirne. We are basically talking about brigades that have been active in Bakhmut since this winter: only the 22nd Mechanized among the “new” brigades has been identified in the area.

Yes, I had seen - I phrased myself wrongly, sorry, I meant in order to support, not replacing altogether.

Yes, despite the losses those forces suffered. In theory that could be a problem - there are Ukrainian brigades fighting in the same sector since October (!) such as the 14th in Kupyansk, the 95th in Kreminna, the 81st in Bilohorivka, the 79th in Marinka and the 72nd in Vuhledar. In practice they carry on as the losses are not too heavy and Russia is not able to carry out offensive operations in those sectors of a size that can significantly damage the operational capabilities of those formations. The brigades I mentioned earlier have been in Bakhmut or in the flanks since the beginning of the year, when battered brigades such as the 24th/58th/128th/46th were pulled out. Then there are some TDF brigades such as the 241st or the 127th (the latter it’s arguably the best among the TDF brigades) that shed a lot of blood in the urban defense of Bakhmut and still continue to be deployed in the area. Rotations afaik obviously occur at company/battalion level and units probably receive new recruits sometimes, but the issue of rotations between brigades is very important and Ukraine has been somewhat latent regarding this point, although fortunately not to the point of putting the frontlines at substantial risk (mostly due to Russia’s fault).

You can find an Italian article here from 2021 that cites the figure of 661 units. There are several reasons as to why the Lynx is regarded as the favorite, which OP summed up very well in the comment above, then there is the point of the excellent armor of the said vehicle.

Now the provision talks are moving forward with the war in Ukraine, the CV-90 also has good chances although from what we read around the Lynx seems favored. I think we will have news on this shortly. Personally in any case I find more likely an Italianization (first and foremost in the sensors for example) of a foreign vehicle rather than a new Italian vehicle, which would require too much time and investments, potentially without amortization possibilities if it doesn’t find other markets abroad.

There are rumors that Rheinmetall may acquire Wartsila naval engines plant in Trieste that is shutting down, if the Italian government will give a sizeable order for the Lynxs (another recent article mentioned the 600 units figure), which is a good option both for the employment implications and because the Army and especially the experts in Italian military magazines seem to prefer the Lynx in a long-term perspective, rather than the CV-90 which is a very good IFV but still an older platform.

Having said that, 661 units (to some extent 400 too, since there are now 200 Dardos and we need to equip a new Granatieri regiment together with the other Granatieri regiment and the three Bersaglieri regiments of the brigades with tracked vehicles) seems way too many in relation to the numbers of these regiments, so take this with a pinch of salt, and I am not aware of any plan about establishing new mechanized regiments in these brigades or any plan to move the Bersaglieri fielding wheeled vehicles to tracked ones, not least because we are investing in new Freccia IFVs and we are no longer the Army of the 1980s with 28 maneuver brigades.

Regiments and brigades are almost comparable sized in Russia, with brigades way smaller than their NATO counterparts. The difference is that regiments are framed in divisions (it was also the case in Western countries until a few decades ago, and generally everywhere during WW2) while brigades are detached formations, “answering” only to an Army or to a Corps above them (I am talking about Russia - the Corps is uncommon as a formation there and the reasons arise from WW2 when in the earlier stage of the conflict, Corps weren’t widespread at all due to officer shortages). Russian brigades are only a bit larger as they include several support units that are otherwise aggregated at the divisional level in the latter afaik. They wanted to reform the Army on a brigade basis NATO-style, but the 2008 reform was only partially realized, and in recent years they have reactivated some divisions. The US Army is also moving toward the divisional model, but these are far larger than similar Russian formations…. Comparable to some of their combined arms armies.

That said, the new Ukrainian brigades are on average small (2/3k men), more comparable to Russian brigades rather than NATO ones. I believe that with Ukraine having countless smallish brigades it may be beneficial to introduce a divisional level, which would allow the best brigades' officers to be promoted and employed on a wider level and improve the performance of the lesser efficient brigades. Though they would need new officer cadres which are in huge shortage.