Russia Throws Last Reserves Into Battle Following Break Through Of Their Front In Zaporizhzhia
- 28.08.2023, 14:19
There, the Armed Forces of Ukraine broke through the first line of defense of fortifications and minefields.
The Russian General Staff is throwing the last available reserve units into battle to hold back the onslaught of the Ukrainian army in the Zaporizhzhia region, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces have broken through the first line of defense of fortifications and minefields.
According to Forbes, the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, the oldest of the active units of the Airborne Forbes, was redeployed to the Zaporizhzhia front from the East of Ukraine, where it participated in the battles in the Kreminna area.
The 76th Division is “one of the best” the Russian military has, and relatively “fresh”, says Rob Lee, an analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. According to the military doctrine of Russia, it belongs to the category of “strategic reserves”, which indicates the seriousness of the situation at the front, writes Forbes.
The Russian generals had no choice: the Armed Forces of Ukraine recaptured Urozhaine, followed by Robotyne, two villages in the Zaporizhzhia region on the way to the main goal — Melitopol, control over which would allow cutting the “land bridge” to the Crimea.
Signs of the exhaustion of reserves in the Russian army appeared in early August, experts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote. This, according to ISW, is evidenced by the fact that the generals have to transfer forces along the front line instead of pulling up reserve units from the rear. This means that the Ukrainian offensive has led to a “significant degradation” of the Russian defense and the depletion of forces on a “critical sector of the front,” ISW experts wrote.
The Ukrainian army, however, also used some of the last available reserves, writes Forbes. In order to break through the defenses in Zaporizhzhia, the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, numbering two thousand people, equipped with British Challenger tanks, as well as Marder and Stryker infantry fighting vehicles, was sent into battle.