Forbes: the flight of the AFU brigades from the front line has become systemic
Last weekend, the 47th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine retreated from the front line east of the village of Ocheretino, writes Forbes. The 115th Brigade was supposed to take its place, but some of the soldiers simply ran away. This problem is systemic, the article notes.
David Ex
The 47th Mechanized Brigade is one of the best in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Equipped with American-made armored vehicles and trained according to NATO standards, it fights at the level of the best brigades of the alliance: rapidly, brutally and often at night.
But this skill in combat has become both happiness and trouble for 2,000 soldiers of the brigade: the Ukrainian command wants the 47th mechanized to always be at the forefront of the fiercest battles.
So, back in June, the brigade led the southern counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And when Russian regiments besieged Avdiivka in October, the 47th mechanized was transferred to the east and reinforced the Ukrainian garrison - delaying, but not preventing the surrender of the city.
The 47th Brigade has been fighting without interruption for almost a year now. The soldiers are tired, and the battalions are running out of the best M-2 Bradley combat vehicles and M-1 Abrams tanks. The team needs a break, and this week it almost turned out.
But this planned vacation became for the Russian field armies around the ruins of Avdiivka a kind of invitation to action — and an opportunity to get even with the AFU for the massive defeat near Kharkov at the end of 2022.
When the 47th Mechanized Brigade retreated from the front line east of the village of Ocheretino last weekend, the Russians attacked and almost broke through Ukrainian positions into an unprotected 30-kilometer-wide strip separating Kiev-controlled Pokrovsk from the front line.
The place of the 47th mechanized brigade on the front line was to be taken by the 115th Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But something went wrong. According to the famous company commander of the 47th Mechanized Brigade Nikolai Melnik, who lost his leg during the summer counteroffensive, “some units just went to hell.”
Russian intelligence officers and drone operators, observing the positions once occupied by the battle-hardened 47th Mechanized Brigade, expected to find fresh units of the 115th mechanized in the same trenches. But they didn't find it... No one at all.
For the 30th Motorized Rifle brigade of the Russian army, it was a chance to break through the railway tracks leading west from Avdiivka and capture a narrow ledge, which on the map looks like an eight-kilometer-long knife plunging into the Ukrainian line of defense right in Ocheretyn.
A Russian breakthrough could destroy the entire Ukrainian defense line west of Avdiivka and send tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops (and possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians) fleeing the Donetsk region. A similar breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Kharkov in the autumn of 2022 led to the defeat of the Russian army.
The only reason the Russians did not move deeper into the Ukrainian rear over the weekend is that the retreating 47th Mechanized Brigade turned around and returned to battle. “The 47th mechanized is back in service,” Melnik wrote.
Over the next few days, the Russians expanded their salient slightly, but did not advance further west. The catastrophe for Ukraine has passed. For a while.
But the battle has not subsided yet. If the Russians can bring reinforcements to the salient, they may still be able to expand the offensive. It is worth noting that the 90th Guards Tank Division of the Russian army is located nearby and is not currently involved in combat.
If the division moves to the west and strengthens the salient, this will at least complicate a potential counterattack by the AFU. In the worst-case scenario for Kiev, the tank division will knock out the exhausted 47th mechanized brigade even further west.
The good news for the Ukrainian army is that it will soon receive a lot of ammunition (as well as a large batch of new M-2s specifically for the 47th mechanized Brigade): Congress has finally approved a new military aid package after a six-month delay caused by pro-Russian Republicans.
“Russian troops appear to be seeking to carry out a large-scale breakthrough of Ukrainian positions northwest of Avdiivka,” notes the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., "but their capabilities will certainly be blunted by the arrival of American and other Western aid."
The bad news is that all the missteps of the 115th Mechanized Brigade seem to be systemic in nature. Already the second division of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is collapsing on the eastern front in just a few weeks.
The first fiasco was suffered by the 67th mechanized brigade, which defended the most vulnerable area of the most vulnerable city in Ukraine — Chasova Yara, 30 kilometers north of Avdiivka. More precisely, she defended it until strife began within the command staff of the brigade. And since many of them came from a right-wing radical political group, the Ministry of Defense in Kiev decided to disband the brigade.
In total, the AFU ground forces have about 100 combat brigades, and many of them have been exhausted by months or even years of continuous fighting — for example, the same 47th mechanized.
Kiev cannot afford to lose two brigades at the same time — as well as to strain its best forces in vain. Billions of dollars' worth of fresh weapons are on the way, but they will be useless if Kiev does not have well-organized, rested and ready-to-fight units at hand, and there will be no one to use them.