The new recruits of the 3rd Assault Brigade are preparing for the long-awaited counter-offensive.
Officers and soldiers training with live shooting in the village of Donetsk have no illusions about the task ahead of them. When one platoon did the drill, they got out of the armored vehicle, and the other platoon immediately went in to do the same drill: charge the tree line, clear the trenches, and form a defensive perimeter until they were picked off. Elsewhere, soldiers from the brigade also practice urban and rural combat.
“We train in certain places where there are landscapes that are precisely the landscapes in which we will have to fight, so we train there for every phase of the operation,” said battalion commander Petro Horbatenko.
Mercenaries of the Wagner Group have withdrawn from the devastated city of Bakhmut in the past 10 days. But, according to the Ukrainian military, they have left behind some of their prisoner battalions, now under the direct command of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow. But it wasn’t just the prisoners who were left to hold Bakhmut. Russia also sent the 11th Parachute Brigade, an assault unit.
“The Russian regular army is a complex combat system, and therefore a much more dangerous enemy than Wagner,” said Horbatenko and added: “They are preparing for attacks. They want to catch our attack, and launch a counterattack.”
The Battle of Bahmut lasted nine months, and the 3rd Assault Brigade was on the line for more than half of that, but its soldiers claimed not to be demoralized by its fall.
