Ukraine: With dense fog as an ally, the Russians advance to Pokrovsk

Ukraine: With dense fog as an ally, the Russians advance to Pokrovsk

OR Russia continues to attack areas of Donetsk, with thick fog being an ally of the Kremlin and leaving its defenses bare Ukrainian.

Russian forces have been trying for more than a year to capture the city with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stating that the fog favors attacks speaking of a situation that remains difficult.

The Ukrainian military said about 300 Russian troops were inside the besieged Pokrovsk and that Moscow had stepped up efforts to bring more troops into the city in recent days, taking advantage of thick fog as cover.

A video that has gone viral on social media shows Russian soldiers openly driving through fog in civilian cars and motorcycles. According to the BBC, which verified that the video was taken in the southern suburbs of the city, the images are from the Selindove-Pokrovsk highway.

Ukrainian drones are ineffective

For several days, visibility was so limited that aerial reconnaissance was not possible, according to a drone operator of the 68th brigade’s “Shershny Dovbusha” unit, nicknamed “Goose”.

“That’s why,” he told the BBC, “the Russians dared to attack even with a phalanx of vehicles, which under normal circumstances would have been immediately neutralized by Ukrainian drones.”

The operator stated that his unit routinely detected and neutralized small Russian groups attempting to advance on foot or on motorcycles. They were also involved in repelling the attack seen in the video, which was reportedly taken on Sunday.

According to him, the phalanx was partially destroyed, but due to the fog there is no image to confirm whether the entire group was neutralized.

According to mapping by Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, Russian forces appear to be closing in on most parts of the city, with some analysts predicting the fall of Pokrovsk is only a matter of time.

Most areas of the city are now in a “grey zone”, neither under full Ukrainian nor Russian control. “We may be holding a building, but the enemy is next door,” says the Ukrainian drone operator, stressing that Russia is trying to bypass them.
Ukrainian forces pushed Russian units out of the villages of Suvorov and Rodinske so that they would not be encircled, opening a larger gap between the Russian flanks.

Russian forces are trying to cut supply lines supporting Ukrainian troops inside the city. They attack not only with drones and artillery, but also by sending soldiers on the ground, the Ukrainian drone operator said.

This tactic, known as “infiltration,” has proven particularly effective, according to Ukrainian military analyst Kostandin Masovets.

He explains that the Russians have specifically targeted Ukrainian FPV drone operators to limit their ability to detect small groups of enemy soldiers.

Russian soldiers several times infiltrate cities disguised as locals or even Ukrainian servicemen in order to confuse the defenders before the main attack of the Russian army, the analyst notes.

The Kremlin is also trying to advance on other fronts – in Kupyansk, in the northeast, and in the Zaporizhia region, in the south.

Viktor Tregubov, a spokesman for the Joint Forces Command, denied Russian claims that they surrounded Kupyansk, but admitted that Russian forces are in the southern part of the city and that the situation remains difficult.

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