Ukrainian forces continue to suffer the consequences of their defeat in Vuhledar, a fortress town in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. Advancing past Vuhledar, a ramshackle Russian force is in a position to flank Ukrainian troops in their fallback position in the town of Velyka Novosilka.
“The news coming from the Velyka Novosilka area is very bad,” warned Andrew Perpetua, an open-source intelligence analyst. “There is no way to sugarcoat it—the area has reached crisis and needs immediate intervention.”
Vuhledar anchored the Ukrainian defensive line in southern Donetsk for two years, its garrison—the 72nd Mechanized Brigade—repulsing repeated Russian assaults. But the Ukrainian command never significantly reinforced the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, instead deploying any available forces to bold, and high-risk, operations such as Ukraine’s August invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
So the Russians were able to gradually grind down the 72nd Mechanized Brigade and ultimately force its few surviving troops to retreat from Vuhledar in late September. The retreat collapsed the front line in southern Donetsk. Ukrainian forces fell back to secondary positions, effectively handing Russian forces more than a hundred square miles of Donetsk.
With many of its best forces still tied up in Kursk, Ukraine is still struggling to stabilize the front line in Donetsk. This week, a Russian assault group with a bizarre mix of up-armored artillery tractors and turtle tanks—possibly from the 131st Motor Rifle Regiment, 37th Motor Rifle Brigade or 40th Naval Infantry Brigade—got swarmed by Ukrainian drones and thoroughly wrecked.
But other Russian assault groups managed to maneuver past and then around Velyka Novosilka, advancing on the town’s eastern flank. “Velyka Novosilka itself should have very good defenses,” Perpetua noted, “but the defenses are meant to stop attacks from the south, not the north and east.” The Ukrainian garrison—including elements of the 48th Assault Battalion, the Presidential Brigade and the 17th National Guard Brigade—is in danger of being partially encircled.
“Russian forces may attempt to bypass the eastern flank of Ukrainian positions in Velyka Novosilka and intensify pressure on Velyka Novosilka from the south to force Ukrainian Defense Forces units to withdraw from the village, enabling further advancement toward the southwestern edge of Donetsk Oblast,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies explained.
“Losing the town of Velyka Novosilka will not, in itself, be that much of a disaster, in the grand scheme of things,” Perpetua explained. “It is just one town. It is the fact that Russia is attacking the defensive line from the flank, parallel to the defenses, which is the true disaster.”
If Russian troops can get around the fortifications in Velyka Novosilka, they might be able to duplicate this maneuver in other sectors in the east. Ominously, there probably aren’t many Ukrainian reserves in the area that could staunch the infiltrations.
“The strength of these defenses, and the difficulty of attacking this ground, allowed Ukraine to underman these areas to shift forces to other areas,” Perpetua pointed out. “That’s over. Now you need to begin sacrificing other areas to defend here.”
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