Ukrainian Brigades Have Begun to Fail On the Line

West of the recently occupied city of Avdiivka the failure of one Ukrainian brigade to relieve another exhausted brigade allowed the Russians to charge forward and take a number or towns on the opposite side of a Ukrainian defensive line.

As the 47th Mechanized Brigade was pulling back from the front line east of the village of Ocheretyne this weekend, the Russians attacked—and very nearly broke through Ukrainian lines into the 20-mile-wide ribbon of undefended terrain separating the free city of Pokrovsk from the front line.

The Ukrainian army’s 115th Mechanized Brigade was supposed to take the 47th Mechanized Brigade’s place along the front line. But something went wrong. According to Mykola Melnyk, the famed 47th Mechanized Brigade company commander who lost a leg during the summer counteroffensive, “certain units just fucked off.”

The Russians have since occupied Ocheretyne and spilled over into the surrounding countryside along tree-lines and railroad lines.  They seem poised to flank the next Ukrainian defensive line west of Avdiivka and also fight their way west and north along the rail line that leads into the Ukrainian held territory.

The worse news for Ukraine is that whatever went wrong with the 115th Mechanized Brigade appears to be somewhat systemic. It’s the second Ukrainian unit to fail to follow its orders on the eastern front in just the last few weeks.

“The first unit to fail was the 67th Mechanized Brigade, which was defending the most vulnerable district of Ukraine’s most vulnerable city—Chasiv Yar, 20 miles north of Avdiivka—until internal squabbling within the brigade’s command staff, many of them members of a far-right political group, compelled the defense ministry in Kyiv to liquidate the brigade.”

Even pro-Ukrainian sources are pointing to exhaustion as the probable cause of these failures.  It could be a very bad time for the Ukraine army in the near term.