Russian tanks tried to surround Myrnohrad. Ukrainian drones caught them in the act.
- Ukrainian troops are still fighting in Myrnohrad
- But now Russian tanks are redoubling their efforts to surround the town
- Fog can obscure Russian mechanized assaults from Ukrainian drones
- But the Ukrainians have proved they can, with great effort, fight through the fog
The Russians are redoubling their efforts to close the Myrnohrad pocket. The Ukrainians are fighting hard to keep open a narrow escape route for whatever few Ukrainian forces are still fighting in the former mining town with a pre-war population of 46,000.
With almost all of neighboring Pokrovsk under Russian control following a bloody yearlong siege, Myrnohrad is now one of the main locuses of the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Around 150,000 Russians from the Center Group of Forces are relentlessly attacking the approximately 30,000 Ukrainian troops with the 1st Azov Corps and 7th Rapid Response Corps.
The Russians are determined to capture or surround Myrnohrad as soon as possible in order to clear one of the last large urban strongpoints between the Center Group of Forces and the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, 40 km to the north. With a combined pre-war population of 400,000, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are the biggest free cities in what is left of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk Oblast.
Russian infantry are abundant in and around Myrnohrad but it wasn't infantry who led the most recent push to encircle Myrnohrad from the north and cut across the barely 1-km corridor Ukrainian-controlled corridor leading out of the town toward the main Ukrainian line threading across the fields and villages north of the ruins of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.
No, the Russian 40th Naval Infantry Brigade attacked with up-armored turtle tanks and other vehicles on Tuesday, clearly hoping a low-clinging fog would obscure the mechanized assault from overhead surveillance and attack.
It didn't work. The Russians were still kilometers from the wide no-man's-land when disaster struck. "The equipment was moving across the field, the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps reported. "One of the tanks got stuck in an anti-tank ditch, after which the column was quickly taken under fire control."
Drones from the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps barreled down. It seems the Ukrainian 68th Jaeger Brigade's artillery joined in. The Ukrainians knocked out three tanks and eight other armored vehicles around the village of Razine.
Seeing through fog
How the Ukrainians saw through the fog is unclear. The thick haze that's typical of Ukrainian winters can blind and ground many drones, but Ukrainian forces are scrambling to develop new tactics and technology to mitigate the problem.
They've deployed ground robots that can lie in wait, spotting passing Russian vehicles and passing their coordinates on to the drone pilots, who fly blindly until their targets finally become visible at close range. They've employed signals eavesdropping to triangulate the Russians' locations by way of their radio chatter. They've added A.I. algorithms to some first-person-view drones. The A.I. can spot targets in the fog better than a human operator can.
Whichever method the Ukrainians used, it worked ... for now. Incredibly, Myrnohrad remains contested despite the Russians' overwhelming manpower advantage and the recent foggy weather that blunts the Ukrainians' robotic edge.
One Ukrainian drone operator expects the mechanized assaults to continue. "There are no signs that they are going to stop," Kriegsforscher wrote about the Russian marines.
It's probably only a matter of time before the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps pulls its last troops from Myrnohrad and straightens out its defenses north of the settlement in the direction of the village of Dobropillya. "The withdrawal of elements of Ukrainian defense forces from Myrnohrad toward the Dobropillya area could affect the overall situation," the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted.
In the short term, Ukrainian positions would grow stronger from the redeployment of troops currently fighting a hopeless defense in Myrnohrad. In the longer term, the Russian tanks currently trying to encircle Myrnohrad could redirect their efforts—and begin pushing north toward Kramatorsk.
