The 425th Assault Regiment's M-1 Tank Wasn't Ready For Its Risky Attack Toward Pokrovsk
Adding a mine plow might've helped the tank survive
Russian forces are notorious for costly assaults through Ukrainian drone kill zones
But some Ukrainian units are guilty of the same thing
A recent attack by the Ukrainian 425th Assault Regiment ended in heavy casualties among the attackers
Did the 425th Assault Regiment adequately prepare for the assault?
Counterattacking along a notorious road of death between the village of Hryshyne and the Russian-occupied ruins of Pokrovsk in in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast on Tuesday, a mechanized column led by the Ukrainian 425th Assault column blundered into mines, ran afoul of a roadside ditch and then got hammered by first-person-view drones from Russia’s elite Rubicon Center.
The result: the Ukrainian column lost a precious M-1 tank, at least two other vehicles, and as many as a dozen troops. It was a high price to pay to transport a few surviving infantry a short distance to a partially surrounded Ukrainian position—and now tempers are flaring.
“Treating our people this way is a crime,” wrote Serhii Sternenko, a fundraiser and advisor to the Ukrainian defense ministry. “And there must be accountability for it. What some units are doing to their people is no better than Russian practices. This has to stop.”
The 425th Assault Regiment, one of three units equipped with Ukraine’s 60 or so remaining American-made M-1s, objected to Sternenko’s criticism. Despite evidence to the contrary, the 425th Assault Regiment insisted just two soldiers died in the Tuesday assault. But it conceded it lost four vehicles.
