Ukrainian Drone Pilots Are Searching Building To Building For Russia's T-55 Tanks
Ukrainian forces aim to prevent an armored assault in the south
Ratcheting up the pressure on Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian 225th Assault Regiment is flying drones into buildings—and hunting for any Russian armored vehicles tucked inside.
The goal: to knock out the vehicles before the Russians can deploy them for a fresh push toward Zaporizhzhia city, 75 km to the west of the disputed gray zone threading south from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast through Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
The vehicles the Ukrainian drones operators are finding and destroying in their indoor shelters are some of the oldest and weirdest in Russia’s 50-month wider war on Ukraine. Blasting awkwardly up-armored T-55 tanks from the 1950s, the Ukrainians are discovering just how poorly equipped some of the Russian regiments and brigades in the southeast actually are.
That the Russian 5th and 36th Combined Arms Armies in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts ride in geriatric T-55s among other aged vehicles doesn’t mean the CAAs—part of the Eastern Group of Forces—can’t advance toward Zaporizhzhia. It does mean they may struggle. Especially given the increasing density of Ukrainian drones and other defenses in the area.
A recent montage of first-person-view drone strikes, circulated by the 225th Assault Regiment, depicts regimental FPV pilots deftly maneuvering through narrow gaps between the walls and roofs of sheds, garages and warehouses somewhere in the regiment’s sector, which stretches between the Ukrainian base in Verkhnia Tersa and the Russian base in Zelene, 8 km to the east. The logistical hub of Huliaipole, captured by the Russians back in December, lies a few kilometers to the south.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.