Rolling through half-hearted rocket barrages and barreling right over Russian trenches, the vanguard of a division-size Ukrainian force—which includes most of the country’s marine corps—has entered Urozhaine in southern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
Urozhaine, a settlement with a pre-war population of a thousand, is the next link in a chain of objectives leading south along the Mokri Yaly River Valley toward Russian-occupied Mariupol on the Black Sea coast.
Two months into their long-anticipated counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces still need to advance nearly 50 miles to reach Mariupol. For a counteroffensive corps that’s advancing just a few hundred yards per week, 50 miles is a long way.
But not every mile on the road to Mariupol is equally foreboding for the attackers. Russian fortifications are thickest around Urozhaine and also around Heorhiivka, five miles south of Urozhaine. All that is to say, Urozhaine is one of at least two strongpoints the Ukrainians should break in order to begin a determined march on Mariupol.
Which helps to explain why the Ukrainian armed forces have concentrated some of their best brigades along the Mokri Yaly axis, including all four front-line brigades in the new Ukrainian marine corps.
After capturing Makarivka and Staromaiorsk’e in a series of thundering assaults along the river roads—tanks and armored trucks firing on the move—the Ukrainian marines, and a separate mechanized battalion from the army, paused north and west of Urozhaine.
Ukrainian artillery began pounding Russian and allied formations in and around Urozhaine, potentially including the 60th Motor Rifle Brigade, the 247th Airborne Regiment and the weirdo Cascade reconnaissance group with its rotating contingent of war-tourists and its crude, do-it-yourself rocket-launchers.
Ukrainian separatist commander Alexander Khodakovsky on Wednesday reported “shelling from all sides as if the outcome of the war depends on this unfortunate village.”
Ukrainian troops reportedly worked their way through the minefields around Urozhaine on or before Tuesday. And on Wednesday, Russian forces released the first images depicting Ukrainian vehicles in Urozhaine proper. It seems a Ukrainian unit riding in BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles rolled into the town’s northern outskirts, came under heavy fire and abandoned two BMPs.
Losing a couple of BMPs is an inconvenience for a Ukrainian force that might include 5,000 or more marines plus attached army and territorial troops, together operating hundreds of armored vehicles including T-64, T-72 and T-80 tanks, AMX-10RC reconnaissance vehicles and Kirpi and Mastiff armored trucks.
Expect the Ukrainian push into Urozhaine to intensify. The settlement is poorly defensible now that it is, to borrow Khodakovsky’s assessment, “part encircled.” The Ukrainians already are preparing the battlefield for the fight that comes after the battle for Urozhaine—a likely assault toward Zavitne Bazhannya, the next settlement to the south.
Ukrainian drones and artillery for weeks now have been interdicting Russian convoys, electronic-warfare systems and mortars in and around Zavitne Bazhannya.
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