Russia's Tank Army in Eastern Ukraine Is Attacking 1 or 2 Vehicles at a Time. 'They Don't Live Long.'

Attacking piecemeal risks wasting the accumulated armor.

A Ukrainian drone operator. 22nd Mechanized Brigade photo

The Russian tank army that has massed in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast has begun attacking. But it’s sending its tanks and other armored vehicles into action one or two at a time in the direction of the village of Dobropillya, which sits astride one of two main supply lines into the fortress city of Pokrovsk, a few miles to the south.

Operating singly or in pairs, the armored fighting vehicles are easy prey for Ukraine’s drones, mines and artillery. “One to two AFVs on daily basis at the Dobropillya direction,” Ukrainian drone operator Kriegsforscher wrote. “They don’t live long, but we have a fact.”

That fact is that, after nine months of mostly infantry and motorcycle assaults, the Russians are shifting back to mechanized assaults in the Pokrovsk sector, arguably the locus of the fighting as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 43rd month.