46th Air Mobile Brigade troopers.
46th Air Mobile Brigade photo
A week after liberating Robotyne, a key strongpoint on the road to Melitopol in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, Ukrainian brigades are shifting their attention to the next town along the same axis: Novoprokopivka.
But every indication is that the lead brigades for the assault—the 46th Air Mobile and 82nd Air Assault Brigades—aren’t going to try directly assaulting Russian positions in Novoprokopivka, a town with a pre-war population of 800 that sits astride the T0408/0401 road threading south through Tokmak to Melitopol, 50 miles away.
No, the brigades are pivoting east, toward the town of Verbove. Their goal, apparently, is to liberate Verbove in order to flank Novoprokopivka.
It’s a sound strategy. After all, it’s worked before for the Ukrainians in several key engagements since they launched a sweeping counteroffensive starting in early June.
The month-long battle for Robotyne was a turning point in the Ukrainian counteroffensive. In slowly grinding through Russian minefields and trenches around the town, Ukrainian brigades eroded the Russian 58th Combined Arms Army and other Russian formations, destroying a Russian vehicle for every Ukrainian vehicle the Russians destroyed.
This one-to-one ratio in heavy equipment losses defies history. Traditionally, an attacking army must mass three times as many troops as a defending army in order to have any chance of success—and should expect to suffer three times as many casualties as the defender, even in victory.
Ukraine’s growing advantage in front-line artillery—hundreds of Western-made howitzers and rocket-launchers firing cluster shells and guided munitions—helps to explain the overall even losses. Critically, Ukrainian gunners have been knocking out three or four Russian howitzers and launchers for every one Ukrainian howitzer or launcher Russian gunners knock out.
When battered Russian regiments fled Robotyne on Aug. 23 and the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade hoisted the Ukrainian flag over the town’s ruins, it was obvious what would happen next. The next target, Novoprokopivka, is visible from the high ground in Robotyne, a mile away.
But how the Ukrainians are moving on Novoprokopivka speaks to their growing battlefield experience, 19 months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. Borrowing a plan from the Ukrainian marine corps—which liberated the town of Urozhaine, 60 miles east of Robotyne, by flanking it and starving its Russian garrison—the Ukrainian air-assault forces 46th and 82nd Brigades turned east instead of rolling south.
Now the two brigades are probing the Russian trenches around Verbove—and making steady gains.
The Russian garrison in Verbove—a motor-rifle regiment, a special forces brigade and a trio of reserve battalions—is much smaller than is the seven-regiment Russian garrison in Novoprokopivka.
The Russians could shift forces to Verbove in order to try blocking the 46th and 82nd Brigades’ assault. They also could assign to Verbove elements of the elite 76th Guard Air Assault Division, which the Kremlin apparently is rushing from eastern Ukraine to the south in a desperate bid to stabilize the front line.
But the 76th GAAD is the Kremlin’s last uncommitted division. So if commanders further reinforce Verbove, they must do so at the expense of other strongpoints along the southern front line.
If the Kremlin does the expedient thing and bolsters the Verbove garrison with the elements of the Novoprokopivka garrison, it could create an opportunity for the other Ukrainian brigades in and around Robotyne—including the battle-hardened 47th and 65th Mechanized—to do what the 46th and 82nd Brigades opted not to do: directly assault Novoprokopivka from north to south.
In that sense, the air-assault forces’ effort around Verbove could be the Ukrainians’ main effort in their Melitipol thrust, or it could be a diversion supporting the real main effort farther to the west. It all depends on what the Russians choose to do: sit tight in Novoprokopivka and hope the Verbove line holds, or reinforce Verbove and hope the Novoprokopivka line holds.
It’s an unhappy position for Russian troops to be in: choosing between two bad options that the Ukrainians presented them by virtue of the Ukrainians’ own clever deployments.
