Russian Tanks Tried To Surround Myrnohrad. Ukrainian Drones Caught Them In The Act.
Striking through a protective fog, Ukrainian drones and artillery halted the latest Russian attempt to cut off a key town.
Ukrainian troops are still fighting in Myrnohrad
But now Russian tanks are redoubling their efforts to surround the town
Fog can obscure Russian mechanized assaults from Ukrainian drones
But the Ukrainians have proved they can, with great effort, fight through the fog
The Russians are redoubling their efforts to close the Myrnohrad pocket. The Ukrainians are fighting hard to keep open a narrow escape route for whatever few Ukrainian forces are still fighting in the former mining town with a pre-war population of 46,000.
With almost all of neighboring Pokrovsk under Russian control following a bloody yearlong siege, Myrnohrad is now one of the main locuses of the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Around 150,000 Russians from the Center Group of Forces are relentlessly attacking the approximately 30,000 Ukrainian troops with the 1st Azov Corps and 7th Rapid Response Corps.
The Russians are determined to capture or surround Myrnohrad as soon as possible in order to clear one of the last large urban strongpoints between the Center Group of Forces and the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, 40 km to the north. With a combined pre-war population of 400,000, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are the biggest free cities in what is left of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk Oblast.
Russian infantry are abundant in and around Myrnohrad but it wasn’t infantry who led the most recent push to encircle Myrnohrad from the north and cut across the barely 1-km corridor Ukrainian-controlled corridor leading out of the town toward the main Ukrainian line threading across the fields and villages north of the ruins of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.
No, the Russian 40th Naval Infantry Brigade attacked with up-armored turtle tanks and other vehicles on Tuesday, clearly hoping a low-clinging fog would obscure the mechanized assault from overhead surveillance and attack.
It didn’t work. The Russians were still kilometers from the wide no-man’s-land when disaster struck. “The equipment was moving across the field, the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps reported. “One of the tanks got stuck in an anti-tank ditch, after which the column was quickly taken under fire control.”
Drones from the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps barreled down. It seems the Ukrainian 68th Jaeger Brigade’s artillery joined in. The Ukrainians knocked out three tanks and eight other armored vehicles around the village of Razine.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
