Three weeks after the Russian 2nd Combined Arms Army launched a massive assault on the Ukrainian garrison in Avdiivka, just northwest of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, one Ukrainian observer has some hard-earned advice for the Ukrainian general staff.
Turn over Avdiivka’s defense to the Ukrainian army’s battle-hardened 110th Mechanized Brigade, which has garrisoned the city without relief for 18 months.
The brigade knows the terrain, and knows how to dig in and fight defensively against a numerically superior force, combat journalist Yuriy Butusov pointed out.
“Return the command of the troops north and south of the city to the command of the 110th Brigade, which has command of the situation and responsibility for the result,” Butusov urged.
The 2,000-person 110th neither is Ukraine’s most experienced brigade nor its best-equipped. But right now it has arguably the hardest and most important job in Ukraine’s war effort: holding Avdiivka without requiring Kyiv to draw down significant forces elsewhere—and potentially halt its four-month counteroffensive in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Manning trenches, firing anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and operating drones around the clock to drop bombs and call in artillery from the nearby 55th Artillery Brigade with its mobile Caesar howitzers, the 110th Brigade destroyed 200 Russian vehicles and killed 800 Russians in the first 13 days of fighting, according to Butusov.
“Phenomenal numbers,” Butusov wrote. “Hundreds of corpses are lying on the plantations and fields.”
The 110th’s ambivalent armament makes its feat even more impressive. Its vehicles—a combination of Soviet, Czech and Dutch models—are pretty old, on average. It operates thinly-protected, ex-Dutch YPR-765 armored personnel carriers, equally light BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles it inherited from the Soviet army plus artillery—DANA mobile howitzers and RM-70 rocket-launchers—from the Czech Republic’s surplus stocks.
As the Russian assaults continued, day after bloody day, the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv made the hard decision to transfer some or all of the 47th Mechanized Brigade from the southern front to Avdiivka in the east.
The 47th Brigade operates some of the best vehicles in the Ukrainian arsenal, but it likely is exhausted from four months of nonstop counteroffensive operations in Zaporizhzhia Oblast; it needs rest and reset.
The urgency of the Avdiivka situation clearly overrode the brigade’s need for rest, however. The 47th recently rolled into action on Avdiivka’s outskirts, immediately made contact with the Russians and quickly lost one of its precious German-made Leopard 2A6 tanks and a few ex-American M-2 fighting vehicles.
If Butusov is correct, there’s no unified sector command in Avdiivka: the 47th Brigade and other units around the city don’t answer to the 110th Brigade in the city.
That should change, Butusov wrote. “We need a single intelligence system, a single system. Transfer at least two battalions, with responsible commanders with adequate combat experience and authority.”
A reinforced, unified garrison might be able to hold Avdiivka despite the Kremlin’s determination to take the city—and its willingness to expend potentially thousands of lives doing so.
As Butusov pointed out, Ukrainian positions along the fields south of the city are solid, and there are obvious ways for dug-in defenders north of the city to channel Russian assault columns into horrific artillery and drone kill-zones. The city itself is a strongpoint thanks to months of preparation by the 110th Brigade.
Besides turning over command of the sector to the most experienced brigade, Ukrainian leaders could aid in Avdiivka’s defense by resupplying the garrison with arguably its deadliest weapons: explosives-laden drones. “We need to help the soldiers of the 110th Mechanized Brigade with the maximum number of drones,” Butusov wrote.
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