by DAVID AXE
The weather is getting worse across eastern Ukraine. For Russia, that’s an opportunity to attack. Thick winter fog can obscure vehicles and troops from overhead drones.
A year ago, the Russian Center Group of Forces took advantage of winter fog to rush troops and vehicles into the ruins of Pokrovsk, a front-line city in Donetsk Oblast where Ukrainian forces had mounted a stubborn defense. The fog signaled Pokrovsk’s fall—and the subsequent fall, a few months later, of neighboring Myrnohrad. In capturing those two cities, the Russians positions themselves for this year’s offensive toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last free cities in Donetsk.
This year’s fog could help the Russians advance much closer to the free cities, whose outskirts lie around 20 km north of the disputed gray zone along either the T0514 or H20 highways. The easiest route for the Russians may be through the town of Dobropillia, which sits astride the T0514. Their first good opportunity to attack under the fog came on 13 November. “It’s the foggy day at Dobropillia that Russia has been waiting for,” mapper Vitaly warned.
As expected, the Russian Center Group of Forces attacked hard, even deploying armored vehicles including tanks. Mechanized assaults have become vanishingly rare since 2025 as the danger from Ukrainian drones has intensified and the Russians continue tinkering with various anti-drone protections including layers of add-on armor and so-called “active defenses” including vehicle-mounted, radar-cued projectors that shoot tiny missiles at incoming drones.
The anti-drone defenses aren’t yet foolproof, so the Russians tend to attack on foot. That is, until a fog teases a largely drone-free day. Most first-person-view drones on both sides of the wider war still have simple daylight cameras that can’t see very well through the fog. Drones with thermal cameras that can see through fog are pricier and therefore rarer.
As the fog thickened on Nov. 13, the Russians rolled out tanks and armored personnel carriers. The apparent goal: to force the road routes toward disputed Dobropillia and seize new positions in or around the town, potentially allowing follow-on forces to push through Dobropillia and ride the T0514 north toward Kramatorsk.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
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