A 59th Motorized Brigade tank fires on Russian forces.
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fourth year, capturing the fortress town of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast is one of Russia’s top objectives. Defending the town is one of Ukraine’s top objectives.
For the troops on the ground, that means relentless close fighting in the towns and farmland surrounding Pokrovsk, a key transportation hub with a pre-war population of 60,000 that, after months of Russian bombardment, is now increasingly devoid of civilians.
On or just before Friday, a tank from the Ukrainian army’s 59th Motorized Brigade rolled out to meet Russian forces attacking the town of Novovasylivka, eight miles southwest of Pokrovsk. Rolling forward and backward, possibly to complicate enemy targeting, the tank fired half a dozen rounds in quick succession at targets in a treeline just a few hundred yards away.
The tank crew may have slowed the attacking Russians, but it didn’t stop them. According to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies, Novovasylivka has fallen.
It’s unclear what kind of tank the 59th Motorized Brigade has deployed for the defense of Pokrovsk. The 2,000-person brigade operates Ukraine’s standard T-64BV tank, but may have also received some of the 150 or so refurbished Leopard 1A5s a German-led consortium has pledged to the war effort.
If the brigade is lucky, it may also get some of the companies and battalions from the disintegrating 155th Mechanized Brigade, which operates heavier Leopard 2A4 tanks. The 155th Mechanized Brigade began arriving in Pokrovsk late last month. But it was already falling apart amid a collapse in its leadership and widespread desertion by rank-and-file troops.
To salvage the 155th Mechanized Brigade, a unit that Ukraine, France and Poland spent months and millions of dollars training and equipping, Ukrainian leaders have begun assigning its fresh but inexperienced subordinate units to the weary but experienced brigades in the Pokrovsk sector.
It’s perhaps the smartest way to make the best of a bad situation, according to Ukrainian war correspondent Yuriy Butusov. The older brigades “have an acute shortage of people in the infantry, they cannot hold a wide strip because of this, and there are experienced [drone] units, headquarters, command personnel who can quickly train and make mobilized people combat-ready.”
The 59th Motorized Brigade and its adjacent brigades need all the help they can get as more Russian troops mass opposite their positions. Parts or all of around 10 Ukrainian brigades and regiments hold a 10-mile front between Pokrovsk and a pair of Russian field armies overseeing dozens of brigades and regiments. In all, the Russians might have a three-to-one advantage in troops and equipment.
According to CDS, the Russians are strongest where the Ukrainians are weakest: just outside Pokrovsk in the area garrisoned by the 59th Motorized Brigade. “The greatest threat across the entire southeastern flank of the front currently comes from the operational-tactical breakthrough of the enemy south of Pokrovsk,” the group reported.
If the 59th Motorized Brigade and any troops and vehicles it might gain from the 155th Mechanized can’t halt the Russians, the garrison in Pokrovsk could soon find itself partially surrounded. That would be an ominous development for the Ukrainians in what is shaping up to be the first big battle of 2025.
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