The Russians Spent 9 Months Saving Up Tanks. Now They're Getting Blown Up In Donetsk.

A Russian mechanized assault on Kostyantynivka ended with heavy vehicle losses.

Russian vehicles in a 2024 exercise. Via John Hardie

All this year, the Kremlin carefully saved up all the tanks and other armored fighting vehicles it could. This summer, it deployed these reserves of AFVs toward the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast for what one Ukrainian observer expected would be the “last, final battle” for Donetsk.

The armored attacks have begun. And as anticipated by some, they’re running into a wall of Ukrainian first-person-view drones.

“All the armored Russian vehicles apparently concentrating near Pokrovsk will be destroyed by Ukrainian FPVs and drone-dropped anti-tank land mines, if the Russians are actually foolish enough to assault,” Canadian drone expert Roy predicted in early September.

He was right. On or just before Monday, a Russian mechanized force rolled toward Ukrainian positions in Kostyantynivka, 25 mile northeast of Pokrovsk. Both Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka are major obstacles to Russia’s drive toward the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in western Donetsk.

The “large-scale mechanized assault by the Russians was stopped!” Ukrainian fundraiser Serhii Sternenko reported along with video evidence. A clutch of Ukrainian drone teams, including the 93rd Mechanized Brigade’s Phoenix unit, struck five tanks and 13 fighting vehicles. (See video below.)