One Ukrainian Brigade Lost Entire Companies In ‘Futile’ Attacks On Worthless Treelines
David Axe | Feb 1, 2025 | 09:16pm ESTCombining their drones, mines, missiles and artillery, the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade and 92nd Assault Brigade not only resisted a Russian assault on their positions in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast on Friday—they destroyed it, leaving a strip of the forest in the oblast littered with dead Russians.
It was an important victory for the two elite brigades—but a victory that could come with surprising risks. According to one Ukrainian combat veteran who goes by “Constantine,” there’s a dangerous tendency among some Ukrainian commanders to assume units that are effective on the defense are equally ready to attack.
So when a formation such as the 92nd Assault Brigade defends its lines from a Russian assault, some commanders might be tempted to order the unit to leave its fortifications, mass on open ground and move toward Russian lines. But attacking is riskier than defending—and tends to get more troops killed.
The Ukrainian 95th Air Assault Brigade, deployed to Kursk alongside the 92nd Assault Brigade, rediscovered this truism the hard way in early January, when it rapidly shifted from defense to offense and advanced toward the village of Berdin, just north of the main Ukrainian line. A clutch of Russia’s best fiber optic drones blasted the exposed Ukrainian paratroopers, inflicting heavy casualties and defeating the ill-advised attack.
The same thing has happened to the 92nd Assault Brigade more than once. The part of the brigade that has been fighting in Kursk “has had its staff replaced three times over the three years” of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine “due to futile orders to seize a treeline at the cost of an entire companies,” Constantine explained. A company normally has more than 100 troops.
Left unsaid in Constantine’s criticism is an implied endorsement of the most obvious Ukrainian strategy as the wider war grinds into its fourth year. Dug-in Ukrainian brigades with intact supply lines and support from drones and artillery routinely inflict horrific casualties on Russian troops—at times killing or maiming hundreds in a single clash.
The Russians have no choice but to attack, as the Kremlin’s war aims are mostly offensive in nature: primarily, to capture as much of eastern Ukraine as possible . . .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/02/01/one-ukrainian-brigade-lost-entire-companies-in-futile-attacks-on-worthless-treelines/
