07 Mar: Ukrainians Win the Biggest Tank Battle of the War - Reporting from Ukraine

[TexasTowelie]

Day 377: March 07

While everyone is focused on Bakhmut, many missed how Ukrainians just won the biggest tank battle in this war. After the fights around Vuhledar once again became positional, Ukrainian commanders could finally review the result of the 3-week long battle and shared in an exclusive interview what strategies and tactics they used to stop more than 200 hundred Russian tanks and armored vehicles.

The largest assault on Vuhledar throughout the war began on the night of 24th January: Russians concentrated their artillery fire on key Ukrainian strong points, opened several axes of advance, and successfully pushed Ukrainians from the hamlets around the town. The first days were the hardest for Ukrainians because it took around 2 days to relocate enough reserves, but once the reserves arrived, Russians started losing ground.

Unable to accept the loss, Russian commanders decided to raise the stakes. Four weeks ago, they opened more lines of attack, engaged main battle tanks, and started using their most valuable military assets, such as thermobaric artillery systems. This is where it became impossible for Ukrainians to hold defense by just using brute force, and they had to become more creative.

The first thing Ukrainians did was to increase air reconnaissance in the region. The intense use of drones continuously gave a lot of insights into where Russians accumulate their forces and deploy reconnaissance groups. Ukrainians did not assume that Russians would use the same roads all the time and analyzed which areas Russian reconnaissance groups were exploring and in proximity to which roads Russians were deploying their armor. After that, they could predict with a high degree of accuracy the place of the next attack.

The best way to deflect a heavy attack is to prepare ambushes, so the next thing Ukrainians did was to send a team of miners to mine the area. But interestingly, they did not mine the roads, they only mined the fields. This way, Russians had to use columns, and they were effectively funneled into the prepared kill zone.

Once the setting was ready, Ukrainians assumed their positions and waited for the attack, which did not take long to happen. A Ukrainian commander, Bairak, recalled that the first Russian column that got ambushed consisted of about 15 tanks and armored vehicles. He said that everyone was just quietly waiting until the column reached a predetermined checkpoint, and once the mark was crossed, they received the order “to battle!”

The first thing that usually happens is a small Ukrainian infantry unit equipped with anti-tank missiles takes out vehicles in front and the rear of the column. This unit is usually located the closest to the ambush somewhere in the tree belts. After the first vehicles are destroyed or damaged, the column becomes essentially blocked. Some people start panicking and try to get around them through the fields, exactly where Ukrainians laid their mines. At that point, Ukrainian artillery opens fire at the predetermined coordinates, blowing up more armor and killing soldiers who clamber out of disabled machines.

During some fights, Russians managed to get very close to the coal mines. Here Ukrainians had to resort to even tougher measures and ambushed Russian tanks with their own tanks. They hid in the tree lines in multiple places around the kill zone and just fired at them from around a 3 kilometer distance. Sometimes they even used HIMARS and M777 howitzers to make sure that Russian tanks were hit and disabled immediately.

A Ukrainian commander of a tank unit, Hrebenok, said that during the culmination of the Battle of Vuhledar, he was doing up to 4 such missions per day on his T-62. He said that in the last major engagement, he received an order right before dawn to prepare an ambush for a column of 16 Russian tanks and armored vehicles. This time they did something different again. He said that they assumed positions around 5 kilometers away from the kill zone to be out of range of return fire and shot in coordination with a drone pilot who called in coordinates on a radio for targets they could not see directly.

As a result, by the end of this tank battle, the Ukrainian military announced that almost the entire Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade was destroyed, and Russia had lost 130 units of equipment, including 36 tanks.

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Thank you. ❤️

[yaesu]

2. I've seen reports that because of corruption in Russia, money skimming

Military contracts that a lot of their tanks are missing the armor plates so they are making fake armor to cover up. Plus they are running out of munitions of all kinds. I'm sure the sanctions are f'ing them up but corruption is their worst problem.

[SouthernDem4ever]

3. I will never trust Russia again.

They have become a terrorist state.