Ukraine's 82nd Brigade Hits Russian Division That Executed 3 Of Its Soldiers

Last month, Russian soldiers summarily executed 3 Ukrainian troopers of Ukraine's 82nd Brigade who had surrendered. 

This week, the 82nd attacked and defeated elements Russia's 76th Guards Air Assault Division (Guards being a designation meaning elite) which is the unit that executed the Ukrainians. And this happened around Robotyne and Stepove, in Ukraine's south where Ukraine's counteroffensive fiercest fighting occurred. JL 

David Axe reports in Forbes:

This week one of Ukraine's most powerful units, the 82nd Brigade, counterattacked around Hills 161, 162 and 166 which control the high ground between Robotyne and Stepove. The brigade recovered terrain the Russians had seized and where Russian paratroopers from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division captured, then summarily executed, three Ukrainians from the 82nd Brigade. The 82nd got its revenge. Attacking with German Marder infantry fighting vehicles, US-made Strykers and US Challenger tanks - supported by artillery and drones - the brigade captured Russian trenches.The Russians have run afoul of stiff Ukrainian defenses—or fallen back from the Ukrainians’ local counterattacks.

A cluster of three hills, rising from the landscape between the towns of Robotyne and Novoprokopivka in the west, and Stepove in the east, dominates the front line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in southern Ukraine.

Russian regiments have controlled Hills 161, 162 and 166 since early in Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine.

It’s this control of the high ground that helped Russian forces finally to halt the Ukrainians’ 2023 counteroffensive in October. But don’t assume the fight for the three hills southeast of Robotyne is over.

It’s not. This week the Ukrainian air-assault forces’ most powerful unit, the 82nd Brigade, counterattacked around the hills. The brigade recovered some terrain the Russians recently had seized then, according to analyst Tom Cooper, “wedged itself into the Russian trench system connecting Hills 161, 162 and 166.”

The ongoing fight is a microcosm of a new phase of the war. A positional, attritional phase, where neither side has a decisive advantage over the other—and both sides are just trying to grind down the other.

If the Ukrainians didn’t already appreciate the military value of Hills 161, 162 and 166, they surely came to appreciate—even dread—the hills late last summer, as their counteroffensive corps advanced through Robotyne, pivoted east toward Verbove ... and ran smack into fix or six Russian regiments occupying the hills.

Cooper at the time understood the implications. “I do not see how the ZSU could punch through in between Hills 169, 166 and 162 and Verbove,” he wrote, using an acronym for the armed forces of Ukraine. (I’ve edited Cooper’s grammar, for clarity.)

Indeed, the Ukrainian corps—led by the 82nd Brigade as well as the 33rd, 47th and 116th Mechanized Brigades—halted short of the hills. Battered and tired, the mechanized brigades might’ve pulled back for rest and reset. Instead, the 47th and 116th back in October and November redeployed to Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine, to meet Russia’s annual winter offensive around that city.

The Russians went on the offensive around Robotyne, too, aiming to erase Ukraine’s summer gains. During one attack, Russian paratroopers from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division captured, then summarily executed, three Ukrainians from the 82nd Brigade.

The 82nd got its revenge. Attacking with its German-made Marder infantry fighting vehicles, American-made Stryker IFVs and Challenger 2 tanks from the United Kingdom—and supported by artillery and drones—the brigade cut between Hills 161, 162 and 166 and captured a stretch of Russian trenches.

But the brigade did not capture the hills themselves. And it’s the hills that control the whole sector. No, the 82nd Brigade merely pushed back against the 76th GAAD’s own push. “Just another episode in the war of attrition,” Cooper noted.

This back-and-forth is typical of the war right now. Russian forces have attacked along multiple sectors, but are making meaningful gains in just one small part of the front north of the ruins of Bakhmut.

Everywhere else, the Russians have run afoul of stiff Ukrainian defenses—or fallen back from the Ukrainians’ local counterattacks.

Yes, the Russians still have more people, tanks, artillery and shells. But the Ukrainians are better with their drones and, at least around Robotyne in the aftermath of the 76th GAAD’s war crimes, they’re angrier, too.