A Russian column comes under fire outside Pokrovsk.
24th Mechanized Brigade capture
Early Thursday morning, a Russian force with no fewer than 25 vehicles and potentially hundreds of troops attacked positions manned by the Ukrainian army’s 24th Mechanized Brigade around Pokrovsk, a fortress city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
On paper, it was a powerful force including BMD fighting vehicles. And in theory, the Russian commander launched his attack at the right time—under the cover of the early morning darkness.
But a year after beginning the long march toward Pokrovsk from the ruins of Avdiivka, 25 miles to the east, the Russians no longer have the initiative on this axis. They’ve lost thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles they’re struggling to replace. Ukrainian “road cutter” drones harry the main supply lines to the Russian field armies—the 2nd, 8th and 41st Combined Arms Armies, among others—around Pokrovsk.
Worst for the Russians, the 24th Mechanized Brigade and adjacent units in and around Pokrovsk have fire control over the front line—despite suffering vexing shortages of infantry. The Russians who attacked on Thursday morning were spotted by a drone with an infrared camera and then “met with warmth,” the 24th Mechanized Brigade reported. “Infantry, artillery and drone crews did everything to make the invaders’ journey unforgettable.”
As the sun rose and the smoke and dust cleared, 14 of the attacking BMDs and other vehicles were destroyed or immobilized. The rest retreated, five of them damaged. At least 33 Russians died, according to the 24th Mechanized Brigade.
Ukraine’s first-person-view drones, which Ukrainian workshops produce at a rate of more than 2 million a year, have proved decisive. Russia also produces millions of drones, but they’re of lower quality—and all but the best fiber-optic models are highly susceptible to Ukrainian jamming. According to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies, Ukrainian drones are now responsible for 85 percent of the destruction inflicted on Russian forces, up from 50 percent last summer.
The 24th Mechanized Brigade in training.
Ukrainian defense ministry photo
Momentum shift
Repeatedly defeating Russian attacks on Pokrovsk, the Ukrainians haven’t just blunted the 2nd, 8th and 41st Combined Arms Armies’ momentum—they’re reversed it in some areas. Russian assaults are down from up to 60 per day to as few as 18, CDS concluded. And in recent days, Ukrainian forces advanced on the eastern outskirts of Shevchenkove, just south of Pokrovsk.
The advance comes at a critical moment in the geopolitics around Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. In a disastrous press conference in the White House on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for purportedly being insufficiently grateful for past U.S. aid—aid that, it’s worth noting, was pledged under the previous administration. And which Vance, then a U.S. senator, opposed.
In the days following the press conference, Trump’s administration halted further U.S. aid to Ukraine and also ended intelligence sharing between Washington and Kyiv. Trump insisted Zelensky and Ukraine “are not in a very good position.”
But that’s objectively untrue along much of the 800-mile front line in Ukraine and western Russia. The Russians have recently made some gains in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast. But in eastern Ukraine, and especially around Pokrovsk, it’s the Ukrainians who are gaining.