Bold and Dumb: Russian Tanks Attacked Along a 'Road of Death' South of Pokrovsk

The city is in great danger, but not from those tanks

Tasting blood in the fields and forests around Pokrovsk, a free fortress city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, Russian regiments did something they rarely do in the 42nd month of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.

They deployed tanks “for the first time in a long time,” mused the Ukrainian 155th Mechanized Brigade, a bad-luck unit that has been defending Pokrovsk since late last year. The brigade’s fortunes have improved of late—and it was in a position to utterly devastate the incoming tanks and other vehicles on Saturday.

On paper, the Russian deployment made sense. Russian infantry have exploited Ukrainian brigades’ desperate manpower shortage—the army is short 100,000 trained infantry—and recently marched through gaps in Ukrainian lines northeast of Pokrovsk.

The slow infantry pincer north of the city has placed both main roads into Pokrovsk within range of Russian first-person-view drones and even mortars, both of which range just a few miles.

The Ukrainian garrison in Pokrovsk can’t move vehicles in or out of the ruined city without coming under fire. “The city is holding, but you can see what is happening on the flanks,” a Ukrainian soldier named Venia told Kyiv Independent a couple of weeks ago.

“The enemy is approaching from the side and looking to cut off the main road in. If they get much closer, we will simply have to withdraw,” Venia added. “Unfortunately, it’s just a matter of time, and once it happens, they can take the city itself without much of a fight.”

Russian commanders tried to hasten the city’s fall by pulling their dwindling reserves of tanks out of the vehicles’ protective hideouts and rolling them into action on Pokrovsk’s southern flank, where small Russian sabotage groups have lately enjoyed some limited success infiltrating the edge of the city.

Road of death

The problem, for the Russians, is where the tanks went. They traveled along a notorious “road of death” for Russian vehicles threading from the Russian stronghold of Selydove through the village of Shevchenko, a few miles south of Pokrovsk.

The 155th Mechanized Brigade’s drones spotted the Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—a dozen or so?—coming on Saturday. “Coordinated actions of artillery and unmanned systems forces of the 155th Mechanized Brigade thwarted another assault on the Pokrovsk direction,” the brigade reported. “The entire enemy column was destroyed.” (See video at top.)

The road was not safe for vehicles. That much should’ve been evident months ago. Analyst Andrew Perpetua recently identified around 150 destroyed Russian trucks on a two-mile stretch of the same road, or a nearby one, just outside Shevchenko.

There are undoubtedly even more wrecks in the near vicinity. “If you imagine, I mapped one road, right?” Perpetua said. “And it’s just because there was a video of a guy driving down the road. So every single road, every single road is like that” around Shevchenko, Perpetua added. (See video above.)

A single Ukrainian battalion from an unspecified brigade was responsible for that initial spasm of destruction starting in December. Its supporting drone teams, including the famed Birds of Magyar, made it impossible for Russian supply trucks to reach the troops on the edge of battle in Shevchenko. The interdiction halted—albeit temporarily—the grinding, yearlong Russian advance on Pokrovsk.

It was an incredible victory for a tiny Ukrainian force. “They were heavily outnumbered, probably like 20 to one,” Perpetua said.

The Ukrainians “moved these drone units down to this area and that’s when they started setting up their kind of drone superiority, where they took complete control of the sky,” Perpetua recalled.

“The Russians basically couldn’t fly drones,” he added. “Their drone would take off, Ukraine would shoot it down and then attack the drone pilots—and they couldn't fly drones. The Russians were complaining of, like, a 10-to-one or worse drone ratio.”

“That drone advantage is what eventually led to this stopping the Russian attack through shutting down all of these roads,” Perpetua said. The Ukrainian drone pilots “had this policy, where they wanted to first take out the Russian drones and then—once those drones were taken out—go for the supply routes.”

Heavy hexacopter “vampire” drones fitted with night-vision gear and carrying loads of grenades or mines, many of them flown by the Birds of Magyar, inflicted the most damage on the roads to Shevchenko.

The Russians are adept at downing the 50-pound vampires with two-pound first-person-view drones that blow up on contact. But having suppressed the Russian drone teams around Shevchenko, the Ukrainian drone teams could fly their vampires with impunity.

Smaller FPV drones joined the vampires, including some fiber-optic models. After blasting every Russian supply truck in sight, the drones ranged farther south and east—and located the depots where the Russian regiments were storing the trucks and other vehicles that remained.

To reinforce Shevchenko, the Russians had to walk … for miles. “Their engineers were saying, ‘We have to build a minefield, but we can’t bring any trucks up. So everyone has to carry two mines,’” Perpetua laughed. “So there’s these videos of infantry marching up and, you know, they’re being told that you have to march [12 miles]. You have to bring all of the food and ammo to last two weeks and you have to carry two landmines.”

Sensing weakness, that sole Ukrainian battalion attacked—temporarily kicking the Russians out of Shevchenko. “The Russians in that area were saying if Ukraine continued their assault forward, if they continued those tactics [and] if the rest of the [Ukrainian] brigade joined in … the Russians were probably going to have to pull back” as far as 12 miles, Perpetua said.

In fact, the whole brigade didn’t join in, likely owing to a shortage of infantry, and the Ukrainian battalion eventually pulled back to the relative security of Pokrovsk.

The city is now in great peril, but not—primarily—from the south. Instead, it’s in extreme danger of being encircled by those Russian regiments attacking from the northeast, where Ukrainian forces are weakest.

Why the Russians tried to reinforce their assault on Pokrovsk along the axis where they’re making the least progress—the southern one—is a question only they can answer.

The other question only they can answer is why they thought those tanks and fighting vehicles would make it through Shevchenko, when so many other vehicles have failed in recent months.

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