A Ukrainian combat infantry unit mostly recruited from Colombian and Brazilian volunteers overran Russian positions in the northeastern Kharkiv region in recent fighting, Thursday statements from the unit and its chain of command said.
Assault teams from the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) 23rd Assault Regiment R.U.G. (reconnaissance-assault group) captured Russian positions between the villages of Dvorichna and Zapadne and liberated about four square kilometers (1.5 square miles/1,000 acres) of territory, a statement published by the unit on Thursday said. The AFU General Staff and the 23rd’s parent command 2nd Corps Khartiya confirmed the local success.
Most of the 23rd Regiment’s soldiers and junior officers are volunteers recruited from Latin America. Colombians, followed by Brazilians predominate in the reportedly 500-personnel unit, but Mexicans, Argentines, Chileans and Paraguayans are also in the ranks, along with an Old-World contingent from Spain, Portugal and Italy. Each fighter is paid the standard AFU salary for a combat infantry soldier.
Helmet cam, drone overhead video clips and graphics published by the unit showed that Russian positions around the village of Dvorichna were hit with a daylight attack by 23rd Regiment infantry using a forest and adjacent wetland to make a covered and concealed approach. Heavily armed soldiers in groups of 3-5 troops are shown moving carefully in small groups through thick woodland as observation drones watch overhead.
Approaches to the more southwestern village of Zapadne, as depicted in the content, were first surreptitiously by a second assault group and then attacked from an unexpected direction. Combat video showed both infantry teams firing small arms and first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones attacking defensive positions.
Spanish-speaking soldiers in Ukrainian uniforms are shown using NATO-standard hand signals, and using fire and movement tactics. Aerial video showed that UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) from Ukraine’s 35th Marine Brigade, possibly bomber drones, also participated in the attacks.
Later footage showed Russian positions and captured Russian military uniform items and personal kit. The corpses of two men in Russian military uniforms, both with visible severe wounds, are shown, but with digitally blurred faces.
According to Ukrainian military sources, the twin assaults weakened Russian capacity to support attacks further south. Major Ukrainian media and some international observers, among them the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), confirmed the assaults took place generally as described and that the Colombian+ unit had scored a small-scale but undeniable offensive victory.
In a statement also published on Thursday, the local Ukrainian area headquarters command 2nd Corps Khartiya said that the operation followed on recent assaults that had captured another 9.5 square kilometers (3.67 square miles/2,350 acres) of Russian-held ground, and claimed that those attacks are “changing the geometry” of fighting in the region. According to Khartiya statements, the 23rd Regiment carried out those attacks on Aug. 25 and Aug. 30.
In contrast with conventional Ukrainian ground units usually using a mix of drones, artillery, and armored vehicles, the 23rd Regiment is, by AFU standards, somewhat lightly armed using mostly 4WD vehicles and drones for attack operations. A Sept. 1 report published by the regiment’s drone unit claimed that, during August, unmanned-systems personnel struck 353 targets, among them 159 command/observation posts and troop-disposition locations, 81 vehicles and 50 Russian quadcopters, as well as 11 armored vehicles and 12 Russian soldiers. Intensive attacks on actual and suspected Russian defensive positions using drones are a common AFU offensive tactic.
Graphics published by the military information tracking group DeepState on Friday showed the western reaches of Dvorichna village in no-man’s-land, and the central and eastern portions of the village still under Russian control.
According to past Russian and Ukrainian military statements, elements of Russia’s 69th Motor Rifle Division, a unit based near St. Petersburg, have been deployed in the sector for months; however, recent reports did not say what Russian unit or units were hit by the 23rd Regiment assaults.
The northeastern districts of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region have seen almost constant combat since Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022. Much of the fighting has centered around the border town of Vovchansk, and for control of crossing sites of a key north-south waterway flowing through the region, the Oskil River.
If Ukrainian forces were to capture Dvorichna village entirely, one of those key crossing sites would be lost for Russia.
Currently a National Guard unit subordinate to the AFU, the 23rd Regiment is an assault-configured combat unit with its main elements being infantry companies backed by support units operating drones and ground robots, and sub-units giving communications, electronic warfare, logistics and medical support.
Core members of the unit are among the AFU’s most combat-experienced, with fighting records stretching back to the late 2010s.
The 23rd Regiment commander, Gamlet (Hamlet) Argvyan, is an ethnic Armenian who traveled to Ukraine in 2015 as a volunteer fighter opposing Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine.
He subsequently settled in southern Ukraine and was a successful businessman, but Russia’s second invasion destroyed his hotel and other properties and made his family refugees.
Avagyan joined the AFU as an infantry scout and by 2024 had built a reconnaissance unit – a forerunner of the 23rd Regiment – specializing in ground assaults.
According to Ukrainian media reports, he and his soldiers trained for more than a month in urban assaults before going into combat along the Oskil River line.
Russian milbloggers on Thursday and Friday reported Ukrainian attacks around Dvorichna and Zapadne but did not confirm lost ground.
The Russian defense ministry’s Thursday morning situation update did not mention the actions at all, but the general trend of official Moscow-origin reporting on the Kharkiv region sector was that Russian forces were advancing against weakening Ukrainian resistance. Other sources did not support that narrative.
In recent weeks and months, official Russian information outlets have repeatedly made demonstrably false claims about the course of fighting in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The most egregious was a nationally-televised briefing to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in which a general stated the city of Kupyansk had fallen under full Russian control – in fact it was mostly under Ukrainian control and by June all Russian infiltrators had been hunted down or chased off by Ukrainian forces. The Kremlin never acknowledged the defeat publicly.
On Sept. 1, at another televised official briefing, Putin was informed Russian forces had conquered the town of Kozacha Lopan, north of Kharkiv City near the Russian border.
The Ukrainian area command headquarters for the sector, 14th Army Corps, on Sept. 2, denounced the Kremlin report as false and published images and Ukrainian soldier accounts from inside the city.