Welcome to this system! 🙂
I have not seen this a as a problem in my games, but yes, it is possible for you to loose control like that, so keep your tanks safe and support them with infantry to keep other units of it. Remember that units cant shot past units, also anti tank guns, this is thematically displaying how important infantry support was. So a tank should not go aehad alone when the enemy tanks are just waiting.
For attacking, you got bazooka, equipment as rockets and sticky bombs, anti tank guns and your own tanks of coruse. These can work good as deterent to keep the enemy tank threats of your own tanks flanks.
You are mentioning a ramming by the russians, are you confusing it with the staretegy of driving the tanks very close, then being able to hit the strong german tnaks with much higher power? I tried to do some research, since I didn't have any prior knowledge of ramming, but it seems like it was not that well used, and yes it was a sign of desperation.
In short, when meeting an enemy group with tank support and you are playing Free Mode, don't go all in on tanks, get some rocket and anti tank guns that can make the tnak keep it's distance
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