Russia Saved Tanks For 9 Months - To Have Ukraine Blow Them Up At Pokrovsk

That Russia's skilled drone units have decimated the armor Russia saved all year for its 'final assault' to take Pokrovsk is not a surprise. That has been happening all across the front line for over a year. 

The more interesting question is why the Kremlin and the Russian high command believed that this time would be different. Bad intelligence? Hubris? Lack of imagination? Or simple inability to conceive - even 3.5 years into the war - that Ukraine can still get the best of them? Whatever the answer - and a combination of all is certainly possible - the end result is the same: burning tanks and dead Russian soldiers. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art:

All this year, the Kremlin carefully saved up all the tanks and other armored fighting vehicles it could. This summer, it deployed these reserves toward of Pokrovsk. And as anticipated, they’re running into a wall of Ukrainian first-person-view drones. “All the armored Russian vehicles concentrating near Pokrovsk will be destroyed by Ukrainian FPVs and drone-dropped anti-tank land mines, if the Russians are actually foolish enough to assault. ”The “large-scale mechanized assault by the Russians was stopped!” Ukrainian drone teams, including the 93rd Mechanized Brigade’s Phoenix unit, struck five tanks and 13 fighting vehicles.

All this year, the Kremlin carefully saved up all the tanks and other armored fighting vehicles it could. This summer, it deployed these reserves of AFVs toward the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast for what one Ukrainian observer expected would be the “last, final battle” for Donetsk.

The armored attacks have begun. And as anticipated by some, they’re running into a wall of Ukrainian first-person-view drones.

“All the armored Russian vehicles apparently concentrating near Pokrovsk will be destroyed by Ukrainian FPVs and drone-dropped anti-tank land mines, if the Russians are actually foolish enough to assault,” Canadian drone expert Roy predicted in early September.

He was right. On or just before Monday, a Russian mechanized force rolled toward Ukrainian positions in Kostyantynivka, 25 mile northeast of Pokrovsk. Both Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka are major obstacles to Russia’s drive toward the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in western Donetsk.

The “large-scale mechanized assault by the Russians was stopped!” Ukrainian fundraiser Serhii Sternenko reported along with video evidence. A clutch of Ukrainian drone teams, including the 93rd Mechanized Brigade’s Phoenix unit, struck five tanks and 13 fighting vehicles.