The Ukrainian army’s 425th Assault Regiment is about to deploy ex-Australian M-1 Abrams tanks, making it only the second Ukrainian unit to do so. But even after the 69-ton M-1s arrive, the regiment’s most important assets may be the creativity, courage and sheer aggression of its infantry.
Consider the 425th Assault Regiment trooper who recently posed as Russian, fell in with two Russian soldiers—and then gunned them down from a few feet away. One of the regiment’s drones observed the cold-blooded ambush from overhead.
Russian and Ukrainian infantry often wear similar uniforms—and identify themselves with colored armbands. Further complicating the identity crisis, Russian sabotage groups have been known to dress in captured or copied Ukrainian uniforms when they infiltrate Ukrainian lines.
In any event, the victims mistook that 425th Assault Regiment Trooper for an ally. The Ukrainian trooper may have encouraged this misconception by speaking the right language. Most Russians speak Russian, of course—but then, so do many Ukrainians.
Recall that, in May 2024, a squad from the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade captured a Russian radio during a bitter skirmish over a Russian-held gully somewhere north of Kharkiv. “We will now try to fuck them over,” the Ukrainian infantry leader said in the official video depicting the fight. “Who is a Russian-speaker?”
A Russian-speaking Ukrainian soldier hopped on the captured radio. “We’re 1st Company,” he transmitted—part of the same battalion as the Russians in the gully. The Russians shifted their fire to avoid hitting their “allies.”
“Let’s go,” the 3rd Assault Brigade infantry leader ordered. “Yell in Russian!” By the time the Russians realized the soldiers approaching them weren’t actually fellows Russians, it was too late. They were all but surrounded.
Blending in
There are entire regiments and brigades in the Russian order of battle that are manned by Ukrainians from occupied oblasts—Ukrainians who are likelier to speak Russian. One of these units, the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade, was at the vanguard of the Russian 51st Combined Arms Army’s effort to extend a salient northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, last month.
These Ukrainians fighting for Russia “would better understand the area and potentially blend in,” noted Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. But that local knowledge didn’t save them when, early last month, the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps and other units—including the 425th Assault Regiment—counterattacked.
A month later, the salient and the 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade have both been mostly eliminated. Now the 425th Assault Regiment is pushing back Russian forces around Myrnohrad, just east of Pokrovsk. Surprisingly, the one-man ambush may have taken place in Boykovka, 15 km north of Myrnohrad in a zone many observers assume is largely under Russian control.
The circumstances are hazy. Was the ambusher a member of Ukrainian sabotage group infiltrating Russian lines the way Ukrainians routinely infiltrate Ukrainian lines?
The increasing porousness of the front makes deadly cases of misidentification more likely. “There isn’t a coherent front line,” American analyst Andrew Perpetua explained. Instead, there’s a wide no-man’s land between areas of clear Russian and Ukrainian control. That no-man’s-land is largely depopulated except for scattered—and carefully concealed—underground fighting positions for a few harried infantry doing their best to hide from the ever-present drones.
It’s that porousness that allowed the ill-fated 132nd Motor Rifle Brigade march right past undermanned Ukrainian trenches and extend their brief-lived salient northeast of Pokrovsk last month. The same lack of contiguous defenses may explain why a very dangerous Ukrainian and his supporting drone were wandering around Boykovka looking for gullible Russians to kill.
