1st Azov Corps Wiped Out a Russian Brigade in 16 Days. So Russia Sent More.
The Russian 51st Combined Arms Army is rushing additional troops into the salient northeast of Pokrovsk.
After three weeks of hard fighting, the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps and adjacent units have squeezed and cut up the 15-km salient that Russian infiltrators carved out of Ukrainian territory near the the village of Dobropillya, northeast of the fortress town of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
But Russian reinforcements are rolling in, opening a new—and unpredictable—phase in the battle for the Dobropillya salient. “The enemy’s penetration near Dobropillya remains a dynamic section on the front line where neither side can seize the initiative,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted.
It’s more apparent than ever that the Russian penetration toward Dobropillya, which sits astride one of two main supply roads into besieged Pokrovsk, was bigger and more dangerous than some analysts initially concluded.
“Let’s start by describing what this absolutely is not: a breakthrough,” US analyst Andrew Perpetua asserted on Aug. 12. In fact, it was a breakthrough, albeit one that mostly moved at a walking pace.
Over a period of several months, the Russian 51st Combined Arms Army redeployed almost all of its brigades northeast of Pokrovsk, including the 1st, 5th, 9th, 110th and 132nd Motor Rifle Brigades. While the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade slipped past empty Ukrainian trenches and marched on Dobropillya, the other four brigades attacked toward Rodynsky, at the bottom of the eventual salient.