Russian Infiltrators Near Pokrovsk Are About to Get the Tank Treatment
Ukraine is rushing heavy armor toward a Russian salient
Ukrainian reinforcements are rushing to the Pokrovsk area in an urgent effort to defeat a Russian infiltration that threatens one of two main supply roads into the besieged city in Donetsk Oblast.
The reinforcements include one of Ukraine’s new multi-brigade corps—and at least one Leopard 1A5 tank.
The Ukrainian army’s 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion—which retrieves, repairs and returns armored vehicles—loaded one of the 40-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5 tanks onto a heavy transport truck and hauled the tank into the Pokrovsk sector under the cover of darkness on Wednesday.
“We’ve been a little quiet the last few days,” the battalion stated on social media, “but another Leopard 1A5 with full ammunition … is successfully delivered to one of the hottest places [in the] Pokrovsk direction.”
It’s obvious where the German-made tank wound up: somewhere along the roughly 10-km front stretching from Rodynske in the south to Nove Shakhove in the north. That front, just northeast of Pokrovsk, is the current locus of the fighting after Russian troops slipped past under-manned—or entirely empty—Ukrainian trenches last week and hooked left to threaten Dobropillya, which sits astride the T0515 road threading into Pokrovsk.
Two of the seven Ukrainian brigades that operate the 1980s-vintage—but heavily upgraded and up-armored—Leopard 1A5s are holding the line around Dobropillya: the national guard’s 4th Rubizh Brigade and the army’s 142nd Mechanized Brigade.
Taking away, rapidly and decisively, a bragging point for Putin tomorrow. Hollows out a little argument he was going to use with Trump about overwhelming gains or some bullshit. Apparently you’re not getting very far Vlad.