Day 1176

On 13 May, there are a lot of important updates from the Pokrovsk direction.

Here, a Russian mechanized column barely cleared its staging area before Ukrainian incendiary drones swooped immediately to engage them. The strike caught the vehicles in the open, setting equipment and fuel ablaze in mere minutes before the assault had even started.

The goal of the Russian forces in this area is to establish a foothold in Myrnograd to initiate large-scale urban combat in the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration. 

This is because the southern part of Myrnohrad is distant and detached from the core part of the city, where the bulk of Ukrainian forces are stationed, making it more vulnerable to Russian assaults.

To establish a foothold in Myrnohrad the Russians decided to accumulate forces in Hrodivka from which they would launch a direct mechanized assault towards the town. This is enabled by a 5 kilometer section of a paved asphalt road between Hrodivka and Myrnohrad, allowing the Russian tanks and BMPs to utilize their full speed to reach the city and dismount stormtroopers for urban fighting quickly.

The main tactical disadvantages of the Russian forces in this area is the industrial zone of the nearby coal mine in the southern part of Myrnohrad, which includes high-rise buildings of mineshaft elevators that provide fortified concrete observation points that overlook the Russian route of attack. Additionally, two elevated terrikons in the area allow for additional observation points to overlook all Russian movements around Myrnohrad, together with firing positions. 

Forward Ukrainian positions in the fields before the city include two powerful strongholds built in 2015 and heavily reinforced with concrete bunkers, trenches, and dugouts overlooking the Hrodivka road. Any Russian advance along this route faces deadly ATGM fire from these fortifications. To compound the threat, Ukrainian engineers have scattered anti-tank mines across the road, forcing Russian units to slow and use mine rollers on their lead vehicles, which exposes them further to Ukrainian strikes.

To properly advance and evade Ukrainian fire the Russians would need to maneuver across the fields; however, the Ukrainians anticipated this and built a network of anti-tank ditches and dragon teeth across the fields, effectively turning the Russian road of attack into a killzone. This means that the Russians would be forced to attack Myrnohrad by driving slowly along the paved road and deactivating anti-tank mines, since the surrounding fields are covered with anti-tank ditches and dragon teeth, while the Ukrainians positioned at the terrikon, industrial zone, and trench strongholds have a firing solution on them.

Geolocated combat footage from the area reveals how a Russian mechanized platoon, consisting of a tank and two BMPs, was immediately detected by the Ukrainian forces stationed at observation points as soon as they left Hrodivka and exposed themselves on the road. The lead tank was equipped with a mine roller, with the rest of the convoy moving slowly, meaning that Ukrainians detected them within minutes.

As the Russians just started their assault and were not yet within range of Ukrainian soldiers at trenches and terrikon that are armed with ATGM, the Ukrainian FPV drone operators immediately reacted and struck the Russian vehicles engines, effectively immobilizing them. 

This led to a panic among Russian soldiers in the convoy as they thought that they would advance faster if they moved on foot rather than vehicles, only to expose themselves to Ukrainian FPV drones right after leaving their tanks and BMPs, leading to quick eliminations, while others fled to the rear. 

This left the Russian vehicles abandoned and damaged, but at risk of possible recovery by the nearby Russian forces, so the Ukrainian drone operators targeted open hatches left by the Russian vehicle crews with incendiary drone-dropped grenades that finished them off and blew them up.

Overall, the Russians launched a poorly calculated assault that almost completely ignored the strong networks of fortifications made by the Ukrainians, which forced the Russians in a narrow kill zone where the Ukrainians destroyed an entire mechanized platoon in minutes. This assault is direct result of the intensification of Russian assaults across the Pokrovsk direction, and it is the first Russian mechanized assault here after months of stalemate near Myrnohrad, meaning that attacks here will continue shortly.

In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Read also:

• Frontline report: Russians creep through ghost villages toward Dnipro—then the sky opens up
• Frontline report: Russia gassed three Ukrainian commandos to take them alive — drones ruined everything
• Frontline report: Ukrainian BTR-4Es lead surprise night assault on Russian positions near Pokrovsk