The Ukrainian armed forces trained and equipped at least a dozen brigades specifically for their long-anticipated 2023 counteroffensive, which kicked off on several axes in southern and eastern Ukraine on June 4.
Ukraine’s NATO allies helped stand up at least nine of those brigades—arming them with surplus Western-made armored vehicles and training their troops at NATO facilities.
Ten weeks into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainian regional commands have committed nearly all of the brigades: most recently the powerful 82nd Air Assault Brigade, which in the past couple of weeks has joined the attack around Robotyne, a key Russian strongpoint on the road to occupied Melitopol.
Just how long Ukraine can sustain its slow and costly advance—not only toward Melitopol, but also toward occupied Mariupol in the south and around Bakhmut in the east—might depend on how many more fresh brigades Kyiv still has in reserve.
It’s hard to say for sure, but it seems there are just four uncommitted brigades. One, the 44th Mechanized, is in Poland training on ex-German Leopard 1A5 tanks and Polish-made Wolverine fighting vehicles—and may already have deployed a battalion to northeastern Ukraine, where the Russian army has launched a countercounteroffensive.
Of the other three so-far-uncommitted brigades, the 115th Mechanized might be the most mysterious. There’s almost no recent evidence indicating where the brigade is or what its status is. Maybe it’s poised to join the counteroffensive in the coming weeks and months. Maybe it’s out of the fight for good.
If it is out of the fight, it should be obvious why. Platoons from the 115th famously retreated, despite orders to stand and fight, during a high-stakes battle in late May 2022.
The 115th Mechanized Brigade formed in March 2022, just weeks after Russia widened its war on Ukraine. The 2,000-person brigade stood up quickly, drawing its heavy equipment—including BMP-2 fighting vehicles—from Ukraine’s ex-Soviet stocks. It later got some of the hundreds of speedy M-113 armored personnel carriers that Ukraine’s allies have pledged to the war effort.
By the summer of 2022, the 115th Brigade was on the front line in eastern Ukraine. We know this because, on July 16, the Kremlin claimed the Russian air force “destroyed” the 115th in a series of air strikes on the brigade’s positions outside Siversk.
“Personnel losses in this unit were over 600 over the last two days alone,” Kremlin spokesperson Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
The 115th Brigade may have suffered losses in the July strikes. But it was not destroyed. A few months later, the brigade played a leading—albeit controversial—role in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk campaign.
Through the summer of 2022, the Russian army concentrated much of its forces around the free twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine.
The Russians’ goal was to capture the cities and consolidate its occupation of eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians’ goal was to fight for as long as possible in the cities, bleeding the Russians in order to weaken them ahead of Ukraine’s fall 2022 counteroffensive.
The 115th Brigade garrisoned Severodonetsk, fighting city block by city block until, on May 27, platoons from two of the brigade’s companies quit their positions. Their unauthorized retreat allowed Russian reconnaissance troops to enter Severodonetsk and take control of some key buildings.
Two 115th Brigade fighters later spoke to Ukrainian Pravda about their decision. “We asked the command: what should we do next? Our positions are destroyed,” the soldiers said. “They would say: ‘Get back to the position!’ Which one?”
“They would say, ‘Dig trenches!’” the soldiers continued. “How to dig them when helicopters and planes are taking off twice a day [and firing on you], and Grad multiple rocket launchers are firing [on you]? And we decided: guys, we don’t want to be cannon fodder.”
Some of the deserters wound up in prison, a punishment that even Russian propagandists appreciated. “It’s war, you understand?” wrote Igor Girkin, a former Russian army officer who was involved in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Ukrainian forces ultimately made an orderly withdrawal from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and, in July, Russian forces fully occupied the cities. Two months later, the Ukrainians counterattacked farther north, routing the depleted Russian army and quickly liberating much of Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine.
Kyiv basically traded Severodonetsk and Lysychansk for a much bigger swathe of Kharkiv Oblast. No thanks to the 115th Brigade.
To be fair, the 115th partially redeemed itself in the Kharkiv counteroffensive. The brigade and adjacent units “have been effective in conducting combined-arms operations against dug-in Russian forces,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. noted.
But as the Kharkiv counteroffensive wound down last winter, the 115th seemed to disappear from the battlefield. The last footage depicting the brigade in combat is from November.
Nine months later, it’s fair to say Ukraine needs every brigade it can mobilize. So where is the 115th Mechanized?
In training, if social media posts are any indication. Volunteers delivered supplies to the brigade as recently as March. And over the summer, someone from the brigade repeatedly took to Facebook to ruminate on the importance of basic training.
It’s possible the general staff in Kyiv, worried over the Severodonetsk mutiny, pulled the 115th from the front line as soon as the front line was stable and it was safe to do so. It’s possible the brigade is rebuilding from the ground up. If so, it’s hard to say whether the brigade will be ready in time to make any meaningful contribution to the 2023 counteroffensive.
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