15 Mar: Fatal Mistake. Three Russian Armored Vehicles Make The Wrong Turn. - Reporting from Ukraine

Day 751: Mar 15

Today, there are a lot of important updates from the Avdiivka direction.

Here, the most intense clashes are taking place right in front of Avdiivka, and the further Russians have gone, the harder it became for them to gain ground. In fact, the moment the Russians reached the Durna River, Russian forces completely lost momentum, giving Ukrainians a perfect opportunity to retake the initiative.

This is somewhat unexpected because both Ukrainian and Russian analysts speculated that the Ukrainian defense line along the Durna River is underdeveloped and too weak to receive oncoming Russian offensive operations. Nonetheless, the Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russian forces failed to seize the opportunity and cross the river before Ukrainians could establish more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive lines. As a result, Ukrainians gradually stabilized the frontline, consolidated control over the new defensive positions, and unlocked the possibility of conducting counterattacks.

Russian sources reported that the Ukrainian Command decided to deploy reinforcements into the region and claimed that these mobile independent strike forces conduct rapid raids to dislodge Russians from newly captured positions. The fact that Russian forces had to switch from a purely offensive stance to a semi-defensive lead to a significant slowdown in the pace of the Russian operations.

What complicated the Russian advancements even more was the local geography, especially in the central part of the region. The geography of the region reduced the versatility of attack vectors and forced Russians to operate within very narrow pathways between the rivers. Moreover, to assault Ukrainian positions along the river, Russians were forced to overextend themselves by having to move through the vast fields.

Ukrainian fighters from the Third Assault Brigade released combat footage showing Ukrainians detecting and destroying Russian assault units with cluster munitions en route. Since very few assault units managed to get to the Ukrainian positions intact, the intensity of the Russian attacks naturally decreased.

The rapidly changing dynamics forced Russians to adjust their tactics if they wanted to continue moving forward. The first thing that Russians did was shift their focus to the northern part of the defense line. Here, Russian forces did not have the limitations in the form of the rivers and gullies, which gave them more room for maneuver. What is more, by breaching the Ukrainian defense in Berdychi, Russians would be able to attack Ukrainians from two sides and slice of the Ukrainian defense much more easily.

The second thing Russians did was adapt to Ukrainian counterattacks by deploying basically suicide units. These units would try to penetrate the Ukrainian defense as deep as possible, entrench themselves, and hold an all-round defense to draw Ukrainian troops, buying Russians in the back some time to consolidate control over the grey zone. These units were usually too far from the rest, with no prospects of receiving supplies or reinforcements.

In order to get so far behind the contact line, Russians deployed multiple armored fighting vehicles that rushed at full speed towards the settlement. As you can see, most of these vehicles did not manage to get too far and were immobilized or destroyed by the artillery. Other footage revealed the consequences of one of such assaults for the Russian infantry, showing dozens of corpses scattered across the field.

The freshest reports from this region indicate that in order to avoid losing the initiative to Ukrainian counterattacks completely, Russian forces started deploying their valuable operational reserves. The commitment of the operational reserves to sustain the movement towards the tactical-level objectives means only one thing – the Russian detachments that lost their combat capability due to losses are sent to the front line without being fully reconstituted with fresh troops, reducing the overall quality of the striking groups.

This has already resulted in a series of disastrous assaults. Ukrainian fighters from the Forty-Seventh Mechanized Brigade released a video showing how Russians attempted to enter Berdychi from the south. As revealed later by the documents, some of the soldiers that were sent into this suicidal attack were officially mobilized just eight days...