Ground Drones Lead Ukr Advance On 3 Fronts While Infantry Risk Reduced
A year ago, Ukrainian ground drones attacking Russian positions was a novelty. Now, it has become a tried-and-true strategic advantage.
As Ukrainian forces advance on three separate fronts, the growing role of grenade-launcher, machine gun and or kamikaze-mine equipped ground drones leading the way for assault troops is becoming attack doctrine. And with big aerial drones dropping of ground drones in the rear of Russian positions, the potential for disruptive and winning combinations only grow in scale. The Ukrainians have made a virtue of necessity by replacing human soldiers with robotics. And they are winning with it. JL
Giorgio Provinciali reports:
Ukraine's forces are advancing in the Hrekivka–Makiivka sector of Luhansk, on Zapadne near Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast’, and around the Zherebets in Donetsk Oblast’, spreading the pressure across several sectors of the northeastern front. The scale of these attacks, and of deep strikes, is significantly reducing Russia’s ability to hold positions it had taken. Having established air superiority over the areas of the offensives and interdicted resupply in depth, Ukraine’s forces filled the sky with aerial drones that in turn dropped tracked ones onto the ground. Russian soldiers found themselves facing robots as they lost ground, falling back to positions that had already been compromised by further air attacks. With the bulk of the work done by the machines, Ukrainian assault troops turned control into real territorial gains.
As part of Operation “Vivaldi” and of the localized offensives meant to widen its reach, Ukraine’s Armed Forces are advancing in the Hrekivka–Makiivka sector of Luhansk, on Zapadne in Kharkiv Oblast’, and in the areas around the Zherebets in Donetsk Oblast’, spreading the pressure across several sectors of the northeastern front.
The overall scale of these attacks, and of the deep strikes, is significantly reducing russia’s ability to hold the positions it had taken, producing widespread withdrawals in all those sectors from which moscow had instead hoped to expand its control.
Specifically, in Luhansk Oblast’ Ukrainian forces are recording measurable progress of more than another 2 km in depth beyond what we already reported in our previous dispatches, which, if consolidated, could confirm the definitive liberation of Hrekivka and the advance toward Makiivka.
In Kharkiv Oblast’, Ukraine’s Defense Forces have restored control near Zapadne, a village belonging to the Dvorichna community in the Kupiansk district. From there they pushed past the tree lines to the south, driving the bulk of the enemy forces in that stretch back eastward. The russian bridgehead on the right bank of the Oskil, between Dvorichna and Zapadne, was the pivot of the pincer on Kupiansk from the north; its reduction, which Joint Forces spokesman Viktor Trehubov confirmed, leaves the russian plan without leverage. This is a Caporetto-scale rout that definitively wrecks russia’s plans to capture Kupiansk, a martyr city among the most emblematic of the failure of the ‘special military operation’ putin launched almost five years ago.
North of Lyman, Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps announced the liberation of Shandryholove and Derylove and full control of Drobysheve, which, together with the already recaptured Seredne, belong to Donetsk Oblast’. This is reflected in all the areas east of Kramatorsk, such as those toward the airport, where russian forces are pushing with units less and less supported from the rear. On September 19 the corps chief of staff, Petro Horbatenko, added that Rai-Oleksandrivka, on the Donets east of Sloviansk, had also been cleared, and that other liberated localities remain unnamed for now, so as not to waste, in his words, «the enemy’s stupidity and self-deception».
The frequency and timing of the announcements mark the public emergence of results that the individual actions we recorded in the field had unmistakably preceded. The recaptured surface area, however, is only one of the variables, because the value of the regained ground lies in feeding a campaign aimed at wearing down the links between russian units, their ability to resupply and the space available to regroup, thus opening the way to further withdrawals by the occupiers and further Ukrainian gains.
In the Kupiansk sector, taking built-up areas and tree lines away from the occupiers has reduced the footholds available to maintain and develop pressure on the city.
In the Hrekivka–Makiivka area, russia’s 20th Army has switched from offense to active defense. The 25th and the 1st Armies have done the same in other sectors.
In Luhansk, targeted strikes on the pipeline that carried diesel from Voronezh Oblast’ have cut practically in half the daily fuel of russia’s entire “West” grouping. From Lyman to Kupiansk and Borova, with the pipeline dismantled, diesel now travels 400 km by truck. And that is not all: without diesel the generators stop, which leaves the drone batteries flat and forces russian electronic warfare to run in reduced mode. Onto this void the Ukrainians have grafted all-encompassing electronic warfare measures that have practically blacked out the sky for russian drones. As a result, the russian “Rubikon” unmanned systems center pulled back because it could do nothing else. With the FPV cover that unit provided gone, it became extremely difficult for the russian army to rebuild its defenses and hold its positions. The russian drone units in the sector, the corps intelligence officer notes, however, remain at 70–90% strength: the window opened by “Vivaldi” is therefore a timed one.
Men, time and equipment ended up competing with Ukrainian drones, which carried out the bulk of the offensive. Precedents exist but are of an entirely different nature: the assault carried out solely by robots and FPV drones by the “Khartiia” Brigade at Lyptsi in December 2024, the position taken by unmanned systems alone that Zelensky announced on April 13 and finally, as a prelude, the July 13 unmanned amphibious landing on the Kinburn Spit, the first robotic one in history. Here, however, we are talking about a full-fledged counteroffensive, and this was an absolute first:
never before had an entire operation of this scale been conducted, in its hottest phases, by machines.
The robots were dropped on the command nodes identified by brigade and corps reconnaissance, and to defend their command posts the russians had to pull infantry from the line, which was then missing in the face of the Ukrainian assault. Having established air superiority over the areas of the offensives and interdicted resupply in depth, Ukraine’s Armed Forces in fact filled the sky with aerial drones that in turn dropped tracked ones onto the ground. The russian soldiers thus found themselves facing robots in an unprecedented clash. And they lost ground, falling back to positions that had themselves already been compromised by further air attacks. With the bulk of the work done by the machines, Ukrainian assault troops came into play and turned control into real territorial gains.
The overall scope of the operation, once fully revealed, will exceed 450 km². It is Ukraine’s largest counteroffensive on national territory since 2022.
On the northeastern front, the Russians have retaliated by dropping a staggering number of KABs. Just yesterday, eight struck Izium, turning the city’s existing ruins into a living hell; two others had landed shortly before on nearby Balakliia, shaking us to the very bone. Even knowing that these explosions signal the enemy’s desperation, in those moments one feels so helpless and vulnerable as to long for a shelter deep underground — ultimately finding a glimmer of hope in the statistics, simply because such an underground refuge does not exist.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
Russian bombardments spare no civilian home in Balakliia; even relatively new houses equipped with solar panels — where residents felt relatively safe — are reduced to dust in an instant
On the southern flank, by contrast, the russians have deployed an outsized number of men: 110,000, concentrated in the Dobropillia sector. Drone activity suggests that, in response to the losses in the northeastern sector, moscow will go all in, throwing men and equipment into the attack. This scenario too, however, should be read for what it is. On September 17 Biletskyi described the russian design as a pincer on the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration: from the north via Sviatohirsk and from the south via Dobropillia, with the two arms converging on Barvinkove.
With the northern arm amputated, the southern one is therefore the residue of a failed plan: a single axis, no point of convergence, long and exposed flanks. The 41st Army at Dobropillia arrivedfrom Pokrovsk, and amounts to a transfer of units already committed elsewhere. This is why that all-in will have to be attempted with what is there, and before the window opened by “Vivaldi” closes.
As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance. Learn more...
0 comments:
Post a Comment