How Ukraine's 47th Brigade's M1 Tanks Ambushed, Stopped Russia Post-Avdiivka

It was delusional, but after sacrificing tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of armored vehicles in taking the smoking rubble heap that remained of Avdiivka, the Russian army thought they had the Ukrainians on the ropes. 

So the Russians pressed their attack - right into the trap set by the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade and other units. In the resultant battle at Berdychi, 5 miles northwest of Avdiivka, the 47th's M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley IFVs torched the Russians and sent them packing. NATO analysts now concur that Russia's hopes of pressing their attack are as dead as the slaughtered Russian meat attackers left in their wake. JL 

David Axe reports in Forbes:

Any prospect of the Russians breaking through the Ukrainians’ new defensive line and rolling into their undefended rear ended this month, as the 47th Brigade and other units turned around, fought back and counterattacked. In making its stand at Berdychi, five miles from Avdiivka, the 47th Brigade inflicted many more losses than it suffered. The roads there are littered with the hulks of Russian tanks, fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers - and hundreds of dead Russians. The 47th and adjacent brigades halted the Russian 2nd and 41st Combined Arms Armies.

After blasting the Ukrainian army’s ammunition-starved 110th Mechanized Brigade out of the ruins of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine three weeks ago, the Russian army had the momentum.

As the 110th and adjacent units—including, north of Avdiivka, the 47th Mechanized Brigade—retreated toward more defensible terrain to the west, the Russians advanced ... for miles.

Those miles represented the Russian army’s biggest gains in a year.

But any prospect of the Russians breaking through the Ukrainians’ new defensive line and rolling into their undefended rear—and toward major population centers—ended this month, as the 47th Brigade and other Ukrainian units turned around, fought back and even counterattacked in some areas.

It was a costly turn for the Ukrainians. The 47th Brigade—the main operator of Ukraine’s American-made heavy armor including M-1 Abrams tanks, M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and Assault Breacher engineering vehicles—lost (according to analyst Andrew Perpetua) nearly 10 percent of its armor, including: three of the 69-ton, four-person M-1s; at least four of the 34-ton, 10-person M-2s; and two of the 65-ton, two-person Assault Breachers.

But in making its stand in the town of Berdychi, five miles northwest of Avdiivka, the 47th Brigade inflicted many, many more losses than it suffered. The roads toward Berdychi are littered with the hulks of Russian tanks, tracked fighting vehicles and—especially—BTR-80 wheeled armored personnel carriers. Not to mention potentially hundreds of dead Russian infantry.

More importantly, the 47th Brigade—and the adjacent brigades to the south—has halted the Russian 2nd and 41st Combined Arms Armies.

In the heady two weeks following Avdiivka’s fall, the Russians rolled through, from north to south, the settlements of Stepove, Lastochkyne and Sjeverne. But only because the retreating Ukrainians chose to not defend those settlements as they headed for the settlements farther west: Berdychi, Orlivka and Tonen'ke.

Those settlements have water at their backs, making them harder to assault across and thus easier to defend.

 

The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies summed up what happened along the Berdychi-Tonen’ke line this week. “On the Avdiivka direction, the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade successfully defends Berdychi, repelling the attacks from the enemy’s 15th and 30th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigades.”

The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade repelled an enemy assault in the area of Orlivka, where the 25th Separate Airborne Brigade assumed a defensive position. The enemy advances along the lakes to the south of Orlivka and infiltrated to the southwest of the Zoryansky pond, south of the village.

The 53rd Separate Mechanized Brigade is holding its ground in Tonen’ke, improving its tactical position by repelling an attack from the enemy’s 114th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 1st Army Corps, supported by the 55th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 41st Army from the Lastochkyne-Tonen’ke direction.

If there’s anything the Russians can boast about, as the Avdiivka campaign draws to a close, it’s that they’ve managed to infiltrate and dig in across the southeast corner of Tonen’ke—although only after brutally bombarding the settlement from the air and losing several warplanes in the process.

“The [Russian] 1st Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 1st Army Corps and the 35th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 41st Army attacked Tonen’ke from the south, but they did not achieve success,” CDS pointed out.

And with that, five months after it began, the Battle of Avdiivka finally is ending.

It’s a pyrrhic victory for the Russians. Yes, they captured Avdiivka’s rubble. But it cost them at least 16,000 dead, probably tens of thousands of wounded and nearly 800 armored vehicles. Ukrainian losses total, it seems, a few thousand killed, thousands more wounded and fewer than 100 armored vehicles.

The M-1s, M-2s and Assault Breachers the 47th Brigade lost in close street fighting in Berdychi could be some of the final losses of the campaign. They amount to 10 percent of the brigade’s tanks, five percent of its fighting vehicles and maybe a third of its engineering vehicles.

There’s just one reason the 47th Brigade can’t swiftly replace the vehicles it wrote off in its fighting retreat west of Avdiivka. It’s the same reason the low-on-ammo Ukrainians had to retreat from Avdiivka in the first place: Russia-friendly Republicans in the U.S. Congress blocked further U.S. aid to Ukraine starting in October.

Even cut off from U.S. support, the 47th Brigade still has plenty of combat power. Likely more than enough to hold Berdychi. What it and the rest of the Ukrainian army don’t have is the surplus of people, vehicles and ammo they would need to launch a major attack back toward the east.