As Ukraine All Drone Assault Succeeds, Russian Attack in Old Pick-Up Trucks Fails

On the Kharkiv front, Ukrainian forces for the first time launched a combined arms attack consisting entirely of land and aerial drones. It succeeded in achieving its objective, driving Russian troops from their positions.

Meanwhile, at Pokrovsk, the Russians, who have almost run out of armor, launched an attack, also for the first time, consisting entirely of unarmored civilian vehicles. It failed. JL 

David Axe reports in Forbes:

The Kremlin can’t generate enough fresh vehicles to replace all its losses, and stocks of old Cold War vehicles are running out. But the pickup truck and sedan assault outside Pokrovsk this week was one of the first significant Russian attacks where all the vehicles were civilian models, resulting in a decisive defeat. “The attack was successfully repelled.” The Russians are racing against the coming depletion of their vehicle reserves to capture as much of Ukraine as they can. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian national guard brigade just orchestrated an all-robot combined-arms operation, mixing crawling and flying drones for a successful assault on Russian positions in Kharkiv Oblast

Struggling to make good the loss of thousands of armored vehicles, the Russian military has long relied on unarmored vehicles—motorbikes, all-terrain vehicles, vans and trucks—to carry infantry into battle.

 

But the pickup truck and sedan assault outside the fortress city of Pokrovsk this week may have marked an inflection point. It was possibly one of the first significant Russian attacks where all the vehicles were civilian models.

It’s an ominous development for Russia. But not necessarily a decisive one.

As a Ukrainian drone observed from on high, a platoon- or company-sized Russian force assembled outside Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, climbed into at least seven trucks and cars and rolled toward Ukrainian positions. One of the vehicles flew an old Soviet flag.

The outcome should shock no one. Russia’s best armored vehicles are vulnerable on the shell-pocked, mine-infested, drone-patrolled landscape outside Pokrovsk. Its worst unarmored vehicles are even more vulnerable.

“The attack was successfully repelled,” Officer+, a popular Ukrainian military blogger, reported Saturday. “The car with the rag”—the Soviet flag—“was given special attention.”

Capturing Pokrovsk is a major objective for the Russians as their wider war on Ukraine lurches toward its fourth year. A large Russian force has been grinding toward Pokrovsk since ejecting the ammunition-starved Ukrainian garrison from the city of Avdiivka, 37 miles to the east, back in February.

 

The Ukrainian garrison in Pokrovsk, anchored by a trio of jager and airborne brigades, is badly outnumbered by a Russian field army with eight or nine brigades and regiments. But trading space for time and opportunities to bleed the Russians, the Ukrainians have knocked out around 2,000 Russian vehicles while losing just 500 of their own.

The Kremlin can’t generate enough fresh vehicles fast enough to replace all its losses on the Pokrovsk axis. Russian industry probably builds fewer than a thousand new infantry fighting vehicles a year. At the same time, stocks of old Cold War vehicles are running out. One major storage yard at the 22nd Central Tank Reserve Base in Kostroma Oblast in western Russia, is practically empty.

Hence the pickup trucks and cars—and the decisive defeat of that recent attack toward Pokrovsk.

But not all Russian assault groups are so poorly equipped. And not all of them get beat. “By employing small, continuous assaults, Russian troops eventually expose and exploit weak points in Ukrainian defenses,” explained Tatarigami, founder of the Frontelligence Insight analysis group. “While this approach results in high Russian losses, which [are] deemed unsustainable in the long term, it has proven effective in the short to medium term.”

That the pickup-and-sedan assault failed doesn’t mean the overall Russian offensive will fail. The Russians are racing against the coming depletion of their vehicle reserves to capture as much of Ukraine as they can. Time and attrition may save most of Ukraine, but possibly not Pokrovsk.