In the Ukrainian army company where Sergeant Magura serves, only three of the 11 armored infantry transport vehicles they had in 2023 remain. And of the three, one is being repaired because the starting system stopped working. The vehicles used in his unit are the American Bradleys, one of the additions that NATO allies brought to Ukraine for the summer 2023 counteroffensive. “But they are old vehicles that have already arrived used and last only a few months here,” he says. This officer of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, the most complete regiment that Ukraine has had, with Western weapons and training from the Atlantic Alliance.
Magura serves on the Avdiivka front in Donetsk province. His third Bradley may take many weeks to return to the battlefield, adds a spokeswoman for the regiment: the parts to get it ready have to arrive from Europe. The situation of the 47th Brigade today is dramatic, according to the military interviewed by Morning Express, because it is the mirror of the weakness of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the face of Russian dominance on the front.
The 57 billion euros in military assistance that the United States House of Representatives approved this Saturday for Ukraine will strengthen this regiment in the coming months, but the current situation is distressing. Magura—the code name of a 28-year-old woman, an architect by profession—provides two devastating facts: for every armored infantry vehicle that the Ukrainian army has, the enemy has 10; For every Ukrainian soldier defending the Avdiivka area, there are 30 Russians assaulting them.
The 47th Brigade was a personal commitment by Valeri Zaluzhni, former commander in chief of the Armed Forces, to build a model unit that would lead the counteroffensive in June 2023. A mechanized brigade is an infantry unit that has armor for its operations; The 47th, like others in Ukraine or Russia, also incorporates tanks and artillery. It was founded in the fall of 2022 and in the last year alone it has had four commanders, an unprecedented rotation. Its first commander, Lieutenant Colonel Oleksander Sak, was relieved in September 2023 after the catastrophic offensive on the Zaporizhia front. The 47th Brigade lost 30% of its soldiers in three months, according to military sources consulted by this newspaper that summer. Ukraine needed urgent results on the front, both due to the pressure of its political leadership and that of its international allies, and the Army launched an almost suicidal mission without air dominance and in the face of very strong Russian defenses.
Sak was accused of persisting in a useless tactic, of sending columns of armor that were blocked in minefields and were annihilated by drones and artillery. “Our commanders had too many expectations and poor predictions about our potential when the counteroffensive began,” Magura explains. “Then they changed and there were smarter orders, but we lost a lot of resources and we were left without many experienced people.”
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Sak was replaced by Colonel Oleksander Pavlii. He held the position until last January. Military members of the brigade itself publicly accused him of not understanding the internal functioning (of a structure based on NATO models) and of replacing infantry casualties with personnel who were not prepared for front-line combat operations, according to the analysis center. of the Military Land war.
Casualties increase
Morning Express interviewed Alexander, a former artillery officer from the 47th Brigade, on April 17. He confirms that he himself was required to stop operating with the two howitzers for which he had been trained and join an assault platoon. The cannons, donated by the United States, were no longer precise enough and, above all, they no longer needed as many personnel due to the lack of ammunition. Alexander, who had already served in the Donbas war in 2015, decided to leave the army under the rule that allows a soldier to return to civilian life if he has lost an immediate family member in the war: his brother died in combat in 2023 “If I didn’t leave the army, certain death awaited me,” he says.
“If we focus so much on the 47th Brigade it is because it is famous, but its problems are reproduced in the rest of the army,” Alexander emphasizes. Common problems are a depleted arsenal and a shortage of recruits. The mobilization law approved this April should provide nearly 400,000 civilians to the army. But the new additions, the sources consulted indicate, will arrive without experience at a time when Russian troops have accumulated knowledge, weapons and adaptation to this war.
Drones to stop the Russian advance
Those interviewed for this article agree that only the Ukrainian fleet of drone bombs is slowing down the Russian advance. But as the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, warned at the end of March, these drones cannot replace the shortage of long-range weapons, anti-aircraft defenses and artillery. The invading troops have between six and 10 times more ammunition than Ukraine (depending on the sector of the front) and Zelensky specified that its artillery is firing 2,000 projectiles a day, that is, between four and five times less than in the summer of 2023.
This newspaper interviewed two other soldiers from the 47th Brigade in November 2023. Both have been discharged from the army. One of them, Ivan, captained an infantry squad in the northern sector of Avdiivka, where his men were holed up on the train tracks. He lost his entire unit, 17 soldiers, killed and captured by the enemy. Russia took Avdiivka in February. Since then it has advanced 10 kilometers in the direction of Pokrovsk, the rear base on the Donetsk southern front. The bad omens are perceived in the farms of the region, which are progressively closing their facilities and moving their machinery to other provinces.
“I know of a company with 80 soldiers that suffered 65 casualties in one week. Before, for every Ukrainian casualty, there were three Russians. Now we are almost on par.” Fénix explains it, a false name to hide his identity as a civilian who works for the high command on the Pokrovsk front and for the Ukrainian intelligence services. This source points out that, in the northern sector of Avdiivka, the Russians took advantage of the coordination problems that occurred between the 47th Brigade and the 25th Airborne Brigade. Magura confirms that in this northern sector, where they are now resisting in the village of Ocheretine, “there are errors in coordination between brigades, but this is because the situation changes very quickly.”
The scenario is getting worse quickly for Ukraine and adaptation takes time. Fénix gives two examples of changes in brigades with NATO weapons such as the 47th, changes derived from the dominance that Russia now has of the airspace thanks to its fleet of reconnaissance drones and bomb devices: “The usefulness of [tanques alemanes] Leopard on the front is now null, they don’t last.” In an article published this Saturday, soldiers consulted by The New York Times They indicated that the 47th Brigade lost several American Abrams tanks in Avdiivka because they do not have sufficient short-range anti-aircraft defenses against drones.
It’s not just the threat of Russian bomb drones, like the Lancet, or smaller aerial vehicles that can destroy a tank’s turret; Magura adds that the enemy has installed anti-armor rocket systems in Avdiivka that are difficult to avoid. “Russian tanks also drop like flies, but they have hundreds; If we destroy 10, there are three others that fulfill their mission,” says Fénix. The American M-777 cannons, which in 2022 were key in the successful Ukrainian offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, today have taken a backseat, says Fénix, because they are not self-propelled howitzers and operations with them last too long in the face of the aerial threat Russian.
“I have spoken with a thousand soldiers on this front and my conclusion is that NATO’s military theory is useless if you do not combine it with the Soviet one, which is the Russian one,” concludes Fénix. “No NATO base in Europe has our combat experience, which is why we rely more and more on our own instructors,” explains a spokeswoman for the 47th Brigade.
Dmitro Riumshin, Pavlii’s replacement, lasted only two months as commander of the 47th Brigade, from January to March. Several sources consulted indicate that the first reason for his dismissal was the high casualties in Avdiivka and the second, that he was not a trusted man of the new commander in chief of the Armed Forces, Oleksander Sirski. “From our new commander [el coronel Yan Yatsishen] We expect intelligent decisions, not suicidal orders, clear and at the same time considered orders,” reflects Magura.
Fénix expects a very difficult outlook for the future, Russia is training 200,000 new recruits for the summer offensive, indicates this veteran combatant of the Donbas war (they are 100,000 more than the head of the Ukrainian Army estimated last March) : “They are getting better and better every day, their weapons too. And we lack everything.”
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