Russian Troops Walk 10 Miles Through a Drone Kill Zone To Reach The Front Line. Crappy Thermal Blankets Aren't Helping.

Cheap infrared camouflage gives away the wearer's position.

The Ukrainian 95th Air Assault Brigade is deployed just east of the shrinking salient Russian forces carved out of the Ukrainian line northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk back in August.

It’s not the most important unit in this critical sector, where a quintet of Russian marine brigades and regiments is trying to cut west from the salient in order to sever one of two main supply lines into Pokrovsk—the one winding through the village of Dobropillia—in order to starve the garrison of this key urban stronghold.

No, that honorific currently belongs to the Ukrainian 132nd Reconnaissance Battalion, which recently ejected Russian troops from the village of Kucheriv Yar, at the top of the salient.

The 95th Air Assault Brigade “is likely [a] second-echelon reserve near Dobropillia in case Russian naval infantry come up with something clever,” analyst Moklasen observed.

This week, those Russian marines did try something. But it wasn’t very clever. And it got a lot of them killed. On or just before Wednesday, a squad of around nine marines tried sneaking into new positions—presumably in or near the salient—under the cover of darkness.