19 Mar: Ukrainians Successfully Use New 155mm RAAM Projectiles - Reporting from Ukraine

[TexasTowelie]

Day 389: March 19

Today there are a lot of updates from the Donetsk region. Here, Russian forces attempted to resume their attacks on Vuhledar. They prepared an assault unit and launched an attack to get a foothold in the village in front of the city, but because Ukrainians extensively used RAAM projectiles to mine the area, Russian armor exploded, never reaching the predetermined destination, exposing the infantry to fire.

Last time I told you that the Russian command decided to replace the marine brigade due to extensive combat losses and poor morale and started relocating forces through Volnovakha and Mariupol. I also told you that Ukrainians conducted a series of HIMARS strikes, targeting the means of transportation as well as areas of forces concentrations.

The freshest reports suggest that these preventative actions gave results because Russian forces are still engaging the degraded marine detachments for conducting assaults in the Vuhledar area. Simultaneously, some Russian sources started circulating a staged video featuring the marines, who basically said that they would continue to fight until they achieved their objectives.

When it comes to the unstaged war footage, it shows that Russian marines from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade suffer another defeat in yet another assault on the eastern hamlet. Their main objective was to breach the primary line of defense and reestablish positions in the first several blocks. The ability of Russians to maintain their positions in these ruins is highly doubtful because both parties shelled this region so heavily that there are only ashes left. In any case, the marines didn’t even get close to the village because they got on a mine.

British Intelligence reported that Russian advances in this region have slowed down significantly because Ukrainians have successfully adopted Remote Anti-Armor Mine systems or RAAM. RAAM is a specialist artillery shell that scatters anti-armor mines up 17 km away from the firing unit. They noted that Ukrainians are not only launching mines in front of the attackers but also behind them, which causes disarray when they retreat or just move through the areas that they control.

It looks like the marines in the video tripped exactly this type of mine because they were still far away from Ukrainian positions and were spotted by a Russian drone operator who requested support. Russian military analysts critiqued the inadequate preparation for the assaults. They said that almost all unsuccessful Russian attacks here have been caused by explosions of mines, so a continuous lack of engineer reconnaissance in the Vuhledar area is unthinkable.

As a result, the Russian attack failed. The infantry that the vehicle was providing cover had to retreat, and everyone inside the vehicle immediately died, apart from the gunner who managed to get out of the burning vehicle and get to several troops that decided to hide in the trenches.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense recently posted an image reportedly of a Russian diary found near Vuhledar that shows huge losses during Russian assaults in the area. The diary details that during assaults over the course of four days, only 57 of the 434 Russian soldiers sent into battles survived, which is just over a 13% survival rate.

The latest reports from Ukrainian Intelligence suggest that Russian forces started summoning recently wounded soldiers and telling them that they would refill the separate 37th motorized infantry brigade for unspecified offensive actions during the last week of March.

Overall, the Ukrainian emphasis on mining the approaches to Vuhledar, combined with the continuous failure of Russian forces to implement sound mine-clearing practices, led to extensive losses and an inadvertent culmination of the Russian offensive operation. Timely HIMARS strikes on the crucial areas of forces concentrations ensured amplification of the problems with replenishment of the reserves to the extent that Russians started calling up wounded personnel to plug holes in the front.

[niyad]

1. Slava Ukraini! Thank you for the update.

[canuckledragger]

2. I support Ukraine in all this...

But there will be future consequences to pay using mines.

They're needed in this case but they're always a deal with the devil.

[Rhiannon12866]

4. I've read that it'll take a generation to clean up all the dangerous war debris

Not to mention to rebuild.

[canuckledragger]

6. sometimes the debris can't be cleaned up, and is a tragedy waiting to happen.

I've lost track of the specific town and event but I remember some kind of stunt where the allies tunnelled underneath the nazis, packed those tunnels with explosives and let fly...but not all went off and are still there today.

The story caught my attention because I think it was a random lightning strike that set off something similar, and had the people in the town worried about it happening there.

[TomSlick]

7. Mines deployed by RAAM have a timed self-destruct.

There's nothing to clean-up except destroyed Russian armor.

[LiberalLovinLug]

3. "..to the extent that Russians started calling up wounded personnel to plug holes in the front"

OMG
Do everyday Russians have access to this channel? Or others like it? Through Telegram? Because I don't understand how they wouldn't have some doubts about their own government's behaviour regarding their brutal neanderthal war tactics.

[Rhiannon12866]

5. Isn't anyone who mentions the war on State TV arrested??