Ukrainian infantry assault groups backed by drones on the ground and in the air have recovered some lost ground and taken Russian prisoners, but fierce counterattack battles involving more than a dozen of Kyiv’s best fighting units were still in progress in the strategically critical eastern Pokrovsk sector, news reports and unit statements said.
A 10-kilometer-deep (6.2-mile-deep) salient carved out by hundreds of infiltrating Kremlin infantry in Ukrainian lines in and around the village Dobropillya is fully contained and a powerful combat grouping assembled in the sector by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) is slowly but successfully mopping up villages and forests in the sector still thought to conceal enemy forces, those reports said.
Two veteran Ukrainian units – the 79th and 82nd Air Assault Brigades – liberated the settlements of Zolotiy Kolodyaz and Petrivka over the weekend inflicting “significant losses in manpower, weapons and military equipment” and capturing prisoners, Ukraine’s Air Assault Troop command stated Monday.
Video published along with the statement showed buildings in both villages burning fiercely following probable artillery strikes. Published map images showed that Russia’s forces, since Friday, had lost about one-third of a 30-square-kilometer (11.6-square-mile) swath of territory captured by Kremlin forces earlier in the week to Ukrainian counterattacks.
Other images showed Ukrainian bomber drones dropping munitions on suspected Russian positions, and first-person-view (FPV) drones diving in to detonate after striking individual soldiers. Ukrainian assault troopers were shown using NATO-standard “stack” tactics and tossing grenades as they cleared buildings. Later images showed age. Corpses identified in the official Ukrainian video as former Russian army service personnel lay in the street. Six men wearing Russian army uniforms were identified as recently captured prisoners of war.
Content published by the 79th Brigade claimed its soldiers assaulted and cleared Zolotiy Kolodyaz and published images of troopers standing in front of a village building and displaying a unit banner in front of a village historical marker. A sergeant credited the 79th brigade’s third battalion for liberating the village and claimed no friendly killed or wounded in the assault.
Kyiv Post geolocated the images to the two villages and confirmed the presence of Ukrainian air assault troops among them, but could not confirm the precise date the video was recorded. AFU statements said the combat took place on Saturday and Sunday. The independent military watch group DeepState confirmed Ukrainian capture of the villages over the weekend, as did local social media.
The regional news and information platform Dobropillya Info, in a Monday report to 27,000+ subscribers, said: “The line is now solidifying around Kucherovy Yar. The enemy is holding the defense along the forest plantations and gullies between Novye Shakhov and Kucherovy Yar. Our Cossacks [Ukrainian troops] are advancing through the fields but they have not yet reached the settlements themselves.”
A Monday official statement by Joint Forces Dnipro, the area headquarters in charge of the counterattack operation, generally confirmed that civilian social media report, saying in part: “AFU units have achieved success in several areas. From Aug. 4 to 17… the following settlements were cleared in the Donetsk region: Hruzke, Rubizhne, Novovodyan, Petrivka, Vesele [and] Zolotiy Kolodya.”
The AFU statement claimed Russian forces during the counterattack operation had lost 984 men killed or seriously wounded, 355 wounded and needing substantial medical treatment, and 37 men taken prisoner. Destroyed Russian equipment claimed by Kyiv in those battles includes 11 tanks, eight lighter armored vehicles, 112 automobiles and motorcycles, 23 artillery systems and 106 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Kyiv Post could not confirm most of those claims, however, by Monday afternoon, Ukrainian units had made public images of at least 12 men claimed to be Russian prisoners of war.
Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade “Kholodny Yar,” in Saturday video and text content, reported its assault teams had cleared and secured the villages of Gruzke and Vesele. The unit’s reconnaissance company reportedly used air and ground drones to comb buildings and gardens. Some Russian troops found were reportedly engaged at close range by ground drones armed with machine guns. The assaults “eliminated a significant number of enemy,” the unit stated.
Ukraine, early last week, reported between 200-300 picked Russian infantry troops exploited gaps in thinly-held Ukrainian lines to the north of the important road and logistics hub of Pokrovsk and surreptitiously infiltrated to 17 kilometers (10.6 miles) behind Ukrainian lines to launch attacks. The northern apex of the Russian attack reached but did not capture the village of Dobropillya.
AFU spokespersons initially said the Dobropillya break-in was a minor raid and that reserves dispatched to the sector would contain it quickly, but accounts from units sent to counterattack the incursion have told of tough fighting against Russian troops not easily overcome.
In a rare use of long-range bombardment weapons in close-in battle, on Saturday, Russian strike UAV operators launched a 35-aircraft Shahed kamikaze drone air raid against Ukrainian positions in the Dobropillya sector, per Ukrainian air defense and soldier reports.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergency Situations, on Sunday, published images of fires burning in a five-story apartment building in Dobropillya, and a private home in the nearby village of Sviatohorivka. Two civilians were killed, and buildings, garages and automobiles in the impact area were destroyed or damaged, that official statement said.
The Kremlin usually sends the Iranian-designed aircraft the size of a small car at Ukrainian civilian targets far behind the fighting lines. Overnight Sunday-Monday, Ukrainian air defense forces shot down or rendered ineffective by jamming 108 Russian Shahed drones, mostly targeting the cities of Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa.
Ukrainian media over the weekend identified more than a dozen units deployed by AFU leadership to the Dobropillya-Pokrovsk sector. Almost without exception, all are fighting formations with strong combat records, and most are outfits specializing in infantry assaults.
Based on those reports, line AFU units assembled in the area includes elements of the Ukrainian Ground Forces’ 79th and 82nd Air Assault Brigades, 2nd Battalion 93rd Mechanized Brigade “Kholodny Yar,” 1st Battalion 1st Assault Regiment “Da Vinci,” 425th Assault Regiment “Skala,” 25th Airborne Brigade (Paratroop), 2nd Battalion 92nd Assault Brigade, 1st Battalion 150th Mechanized Brigade, and unspecified elements of the 32nd Mechanized Brigade.
Specialist and non-AFU or non-regular Ukrainian Ground Forces elements with men and equipment on the ground in the containment sector per media reports include the 1st Battalion and drone battalion of the 12th National Guard Brigade “Azov,” the 14th National Guard Brigade, the Ukrainian Naval Force’s 38th Marine Brigade, and the Interior Ministry’s Lyiut tactical police brigade.