Putin's Prized Tanks Go Up In Smoke After Disastrous Assault Near Pokrovsk

Tank warfare is back—but Russia’s newest armor ran into Ukrainian mines, drones

A Russian marine corps T-80BVM. Russian defense ministry photo

Russia spent nearly a year carefully stockpiling every available tank and armored vehicle for a major mechanized offensive in Donetsk Oblast. That offensive is now fully underway—and it’s turning into a bloodbath for Russian armor.

On Oct. 9 alone, Ukrainian forces destroyed at least 20 vehicles from a column of three dozen tanks and fighting vehicles assaulting near Pokrovsk. The losses matter because Russia can’t replace what it’s losing: the country’s two tank factories may have produced just 10 new T-90M tanks this year.

That doesn’t mean the Russians won’t gain ground around the fortress city of Pokrovsk, one of the last urban strongpoints between the 150,000-man Russian Central Grouping of Forces and the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in western Donetsk.

It does mean the Russians are paying dearly for any ground they do gain. And they’re losing many of those tanks and AFVs they spent so much time stockpiling.

The most recent mechanized assault near Pokrovsk was also one of the biggest in recent memory.

On 9 October, around three dozen Russian tanks and AFVs, plus no fewer than 40 motorcycle troops, rushed toward the village of Shakhove, 20 km north of Pokrovsk.

Shakhove anchors Ukrainian defenses east of a 40-square-kilometer salient that Russian troops carved out of Ukrainian-held ground north of Pokrovsk this summer. The Ukrainian 225th Assault Regiment garrisons the village with support from the 1st Azov Corps.

“The enemy carried out offensive actions in several waves and from different directions,” the 1st Azov Brigade reported. “Initially, groups of motorcyclists advanced, followed by columns of armored vehicles—tanks and armored personnel carriers with infantry.”

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.