Ukrainian Units Are Mopping Up Surviving Russians At Dobropillya

The mopping up is in some cases literal given the scale of the Russian defeat. 

The lesson is that in war of this kind, maintaining sufficient mobile reserves is crucial, especially given the Russians' lack of armor, other vehicles and competent reserves of their own, meaning that they are incapable of exploiting opportunities. JL

Stefan Korshak reports in the Kyiv Post:

The Russian “penetration” towards Dobropillya is basically over; there are some smaller bands of Russian troops at large, and over the week, there has been fighting with the general trend of Ukrainians slowly advancing and taking prisoners. Conventional wisdom is that the Russians are gone, but the Ukrainians haven’t yet moved in everywhere, so part of the salient is mopped up, and part of it is a gray zone. What’s going on is a cycle of preparation, reconnaissance, and deliberate short-objective assaults (to finish this off).

The main news here is that the Russian “penetration” towards Dobropillya is basically over; there are some smaller bands of Russian troops at large, and over the week, there has been back-and-forth fighting with the general trend of Ukrainians slowly advancing and taking prisoners.

I am informed that the Ukrainian strategy is to let starvation and thirst force the Russians to give up. However, given this is Russian infantry, the more likely outcome is that they will sneak out of encirclement in most cases. Conventional wisdom is that the Russians are basically gone, but the Ukrainians haven’t yet moved in everywhere, so part of the salient is mopped up, and part of it is a gray zone. Here’s a write-up of how things looked on Monday, Aug. 25. There haven’t been many updates since then.

 

As time has passed, we have gotten a better picture of the units involved in the Ukrainian counterattacks in this sector. One of the best ways we have of knowing where they are and are not is by tracking content the units themselves put on the internet, and then matching it against other information. This requires wading through the repeats of funny videos, Syrksy announcements, Zelensky briefings, appeals for donations, and recruiting ads that appear constantly on combat unit Telegram channels. But every once in a while, solid battle information gets posted that you can connect to a location. The conventional wisdom is, this sort of stuff is usually posted 24-72 hours after the event, but sometimes units are so proud of what they did that it almost becomes real-time.

 

My observation is pretty much all the units involved in the Dobropillya counterattacks have effectively gone dark: the generic non-tactical content is flowing, but from the front, nothing.

This is normally an indicator of units preparing for or executing an operation, or absolutely static activity. From the Russian side, reports are that fighting is still in progress. I’ve seen conflicting reports about who’s in control of Myrne.

 

Here’s the list of units that were in the Dobropillya area last week, and who should be there this week, but if they are, they’re radio/internet silent. The date is the last time the official brigade Telegram channel told the world what the unit was up to, and where:

Azov – Aug. 17

82nd Assault – Aug. 20

93rd Mech – Aug. 20

37th Marines – Aug. 20

4th NG Rubizh – Aug. 24

RVK – Aug. 28

92nd Assault – Aug .16

Liut Special Ops Police – Aug. 18

82nd Air Assault promo image.

But, the outlier was 425th Assault Regiment Skala, which, until Wednesday, had not registered any trackable activity, but then reported its attacks had entered the western end of the town Novoekonomichine.

There are hints that what’s going on is a cycle of preparation, reconnaissance, and deliberate short-objective assaults. Unless all those above units were so exhausted from fighting last week that they could do nothing, it’s logical to expect they would rest up a bit and fight more this week. But I can’t confirm it.

 

I think it’s also useful to take a look at a brilliant piece of work by a young Frenchman who has plotted every single Russian air strike for months (image of Pokrovsk sector). On the tactical level, this is an excellent explanation as to why Ukrainian lines are so thin and why weak air defenses force Ukraine to lose ground. In the Pokrovsk context, we might not be seeing much evidence of Ukrainian operational activity, because the Russians are bombing the cr*p out of the whole sector.

Excellent French evaluation of air strikes in Pokrovsk sector, all credit to Clement, brilliant research!

As to the psychological side, see the section about this morning’s attack.

In other developments, it seems Ukrainian forces retreated in the Serebryanske forest sector. According to several accounts, it was several hundred meters to a few kilometers, and it was organized withdrawals. Which may be true, but the Russians published video of at least eight soldiers looking like Ukrainian POWs being led to the rear by Russian soldiers.

 

Also, in the Zaporizhzhia sector, there are some pretty believable reports that the Russian Volunteer Corps, a big company/small battalion-sized unit made up mostly of Russian nationals fighting on the Ukrainian side, captured 16 prisoners, possibly in attacks on the village of Malynivka.