A Ukrainian M-1 Tank Led An Assault Group On A Suicide Mission

The 425th Assault Regiment troopers were 'easy targets' for Russian drones

The Russians aren’t the only ones sending mechanized assault groups to get massacred in the miles-wide drone kill zone that straddles the contested gray zone threading 700 miles through northern, eastern and southern Ukraine.

On March 31, the Ukrainian 425th Assault “Rock” Regiment, supported by the 155th Mechanized Brigade, mustered an assault group with a M-1 tank and four BMP fighting vehicles—and sent it rolling along a notorious road of death between the front-line village of Hryshyne and the Russian-occupied ruins of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine.

Commanders hoped foggy weather would hide the column from Russian drones. It didn’t. Fiber-optic first-person-view drones from Russia’s elite Rubicon Center barreled in, damaging or destroying several vehicles including the M-1 and killing as many as a dozen Ukrainians.

Ukrainian observers were horrified. “We often laugh at the enemy when he sends his troops in columns to storm our positions,” wrote Serhii Sternenko, a fundraiser and advisor to the Ukrainian defense ministry. “Under conditions of total drone dominance, columns become easy targets, and the enemy suffers heavy losses. And he keeps doing it again and again. But what about Ukrainian commanders who do the same thing?”