Russia Is Massing Tanks for a 'Last, Final Battle.' So Ukraine Is Massing Tank-Killing Troops.

The coming clash 'will be bigger, bloodier.'

An 80th Air Assault Brigade drone operator. 80th Air Assault Brigade

Tens of thousands of Russian reinforcements and potentially hundreds of armored vehicles from at least nine regiments and brigades are massing around the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast for what Ukrainian drone operator Kriegsforscher described as a “last, final battle.”

Now the Ukrainians are beginning to deploy additional forces to the area, too. One brigade just moved out. At least two more are poised to join it.

The coming clash between massed tank and anti-tank forces and their supporting drones and artillery “will be bigger, bloodier” than the infantry battles that were common earlier this year, Finnish analyst Joni Askola warned.

No fewer than five Russian marine and airborne brigades and regiments plus a tank regiment, an infantry regiment and two motor rifle brigades have redeployed—or are in the process of redeploying—from Sumy Oblast in northern Ukraine to the bottom of the collapsing Russian salient near Dobropillya just northeast of Pokrovsk.

At the same time, a Russian motor rifle division is quitting Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine in order to stage in Chasiv Yar, 40 miles northeast of Pokrovsk.

There were already at least eight Russian corps and field armies along the front stretching from Chasiv Yar to Pokrovsk. Now there may be the equivalent of nine. Potentially 150,000 troops, in all.