Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) troops fighting from fortifications and backed by drone swarms, mortars and artillery are successfully holding their ground and inflicting heavy casualties against a new wave of Russian assaults across the fighting front, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a national television address late Sunday evening.
The Ukrainian leader said the country thanked men and women on the front lines fighting in sub-zero temperatures against Russian forces outnumbering and outgunning them.
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“I want to commend our soldiers: despite everything, despite the harsh weather and constant Russian assaults, we have good results in defending our positions. It is important that in many areas our soldiers are doing exactly what is needed for Ukraine. Thank you all, guys!,” Zelensky said in part.
Zelensky added that repeated Russian assaults along the Russo-Ukrainian War’s 1,200-kilometer (746 mile) fighting line had all been repelled in fighting over the weekend, including in combat around the southern city Hulyaipole where, he said, three Ukrainian attack units – 5th Assault Brigade, 1st and 225th Separate Assault Regiments – had successfully counterattacked and regained ground.
Other sectors seeing Ukrainian defense successes in the past 48 hours, and named by Zelensky, included the Kupyansk and Kharkiv sectors, the Pokrovsk and Ocheretyne sectors, the northern Sumy sector, and the southern Orikhiv sector.
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Combat units shouted out by name in Zelensky’s address as having repelled Russian forces with heavy losses included the 429th Brigade of Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) “Achilles,” the 13th National Guard Brigade “Khartia,” the 101st General Staff Guards Brigade, and the 475th Assault Regiment (Kupyansk); the 127th Heavy Mechanized Brigade (Kharkiv); the 25th Airborne Parachute Brigade, the 14th National Guard Brigade “Chervona Kalyna” and the 425th Separate Assault Regiment (Pokrovsk/Ocheretyne), the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade (Orikhiv) and the 71st Jaeger Brigade (Sumy). Zelensky’s description of unit locations matched independent analysis of AFU units along the front and was consistent with Kyiv Post research.
The AFU General Staff (GS) daily situation update on Monday reported continuing intense combat with 144 engagements recorded across the fighting front in the past 24 hours, 43 of them in the Pokrovsk/Ocheretyne sector, all of which were repelled. Estimated Russian casualties on the day were high at 1,020 believed killed or severely wounded, but some 20 percent lower than Russian casualties recorded during peak periods of Russian assaults in May and in August.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on the day reported its forces had been conducting offensive operations and claimed the capture three Ukrainian villages (Pavlivka and Novoboikivske in the Zaporizhzhia region, Komarivka in the Sumy region). Ukrainian army sources confirmed fighting at or near those locations but denied ground lost.
Individual unit reports reviewed by Kyiv Post, practically without exception, supported the Zelensky/AFU narrative of heavy Russian assaults failing to gain ground and taking heavy losses.
In an engagement supported by overhead imagery, Ukraine’s 414th Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) Brigade “Madyar’s Birds” claimed its aircraft and operators intercepted and wiped out a Russian attack in the Pokrovsk sector on Friday, destroying all vehicles and killing or severely injuring all Kremlin troops attempting an assault.
Video supporting the 414 Brigade claim published on Ukrainian AFU news feeds showed four overturned, demolished, or burning 4WD vehicles and at least 10 soldiers attempting to run away from First Person View (FPV) and bomber drone attacks. Other images showed the purportedly Russian infantry coming under accurate mortar and artillery fire. Strike teams from the unit have been deployed to the Pokrovsk sector since November.
According to compiled data made public by the USF on Monday, Ukraine’s drone forces accounted for about one of every three damaged or destroyed Russian combat vehicle and soldier casualty on Sunday, including 47 Russian drone launch sites, 47 Russian military vehicles or motorcycles, 214 soldiers seriously injured and 187 confirmed killed. Kyiv Post could not confirm those figures independently. Per USF doctrine all Russian losses are confirmed by drone video.
The AFU’s 77th Assault Brigade, a formation participating in successful counterattacks in the Kuypansk sector in December and January, on Monday published video that unit said showed Ukrainian drones homing in on and destroying Russian bunkers and individual soldiers, or ramming Russian observation drones in combat action reportedly to the north and east of the city. More than half of the engagements took place at night, the video showed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in a late November television “news” presentation aired nationally praised troops and Russian arms for “capturing” Kupyansk, a top Kremlin objective since 2022, only to see President Volodymyr Zelensky appear there the next day to denounce the claim as fake news. Independent media confirmed Ukrainian forces had destroyed all Russian forces in the city and taken control of Kupyansk by mid-January.
Saturday video published by the National Guard drone unit Hostri Kartuzy (Peeky Blinders) on Saturday showed a three-man Russian infantry team walking down a snowy road and being methodically driven to ground and then hit with drone-dropped grenades, and no survivors. The Russian soldiers had been carrying heavy backpacks, a common Russian army tactic for supply to frontline units unreachable by military vehicles, because of drone swarms overhead. According to Kyiv Post records, the unit is deployed to the Pokrovsk sector but the precise location of the engagement was not possible to confirm.
In late November and through December Russian forces scored successful, short-distance advances in the Pokrovsk and other sectors by waiting for high winds, rain and cloud cover to arrive over the battlefield, forcing USF units to ground their observation and attack drones. Clearing and colder weather arriving in mid-January has allowed the USF to increase its sortie rates above key battlefields, increasing numbers of successful drone strikes and Russian casualties.
A Kyiv Post review of Ukrainian drone unit information feeds found extensive new video of AFU tactical drone strikes over the weekend and through Monday at combat locations across the front.