A Funeral for Maneuver Warfare, Held in the Sunflower Fields of Donetsk
By:?Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine
As you’ll read below, describing the war from the field, and even surviving, is becoming increasingly difficult. If we’ve somehow managed to do so in these 1,617 days,
WE ARE DEEPLY GRATEFUL TO THOSE WHO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE, SUPPORTING US.
Kramatorsk, Donetsk — A few days ago, on the Dobropillia axis, the Russians did something they had not done in quite a while: they?launched?a genuine, full-dress mechanized assault against Ukrainian positions — tanks in the lead, support vehicles behind. Although the defenders themselves were the first to acknowledge it, we had no way to verify it at the time, so we preferred to wait until we were back here, among the hottest Ukrainian positions in the Donbas, to cross-check direct testimony at several levels with our own observations from the field.
It was one of the largest armored breakthrough attempts in months anywhere on the southern flank of Donetsk region. And it ended the way it was easy to imagine it would end: with the wreckage of Russian armor burning among sunflower fields strewn with corpses.
The tally leaves no room for interpretation: all nine tanks the occupiers committed were destroyed, and with them the secondary vehicles too (two armored fighting vehicles and three BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers). Some of the T-72B3s, in the modernized 2022 version, even carried the Arena-M active protection system, which was supposed to intercept incoming threats: it proved useless against the Ukrainian FPV drones that?locked onto?them one by one, striking their known weak points. The Russian soldiers wounded or killed in the operation number several dozen — but it is precisely on this point that we feel obliged to be clear: this episode must not be read through a twentieth-century lens, filed away as a repelled armored offensive, that is, a failed breakthrough.
The purpose of this kind of offensive is not to break through. It cannot be, for the simple reason that there is no linear front to break.
When we?explained?that the front, in this war, is not a line but a volume — a belt tens of kilometers deep, saturated by both sides with drones, sensors and small teams of infantry lying in wait — the direct consequence was exactly this:?in a volume you do not break through, you infiltrate. Both sides do, reciprocally.?The armored column, then, does not serve to rupture any front: it serves to carry forward, under armor and in the chaos of the attack, a few dozen infantrymen to be dropped deep inside while the vehicles burn. The wrecks of those tanks are nothing but the armored, expendable taxis of an infiltration.
What those infantrymen do once inside is something we?documented?on video from Dobropillia itself last year: they hide in cellars, in tree lines and in farmhouses — killing farmers and entire families — they wait for other groups to trickle in and join them, they try to accumulate until they can claim a presence that maps compiled synthetically from afar will record as an “advance”. In the meantime they are hunted down, one by one, by Ukrainian drones and search teams. What we have been describing for a long time now is?a war of reciprocal attrition-by-drip, in which possession of the ground is no longer measured in lines drawn on a map but in who manages to make the volume unlivable for the other.
And this is where the arithmetic becomes staggering.
To accumulate the human material needed for these attempts, the Russians lost an enormous number of men in the preceding months on this very axis — a continuous hemorrhage of small assaults consumed against the Ukrainian engagement zone.
And they lost still more in this attempt, in a manner so identical to the previous waves fed into the Ukrainian meat grinder that we could reuse, word for word, the?article?we wrote from these same places last year to document an identical attack. That is the whole point:?to infiltrate a few dozen soldiers beyond the Ukrainian positions, Moscow is willing to lose fourteen mechanized vehicles?— nine of them tanks — and then more soldiers on top of that.
It is?a doctrine of expendability taken to its extreme consequences, in which even the individual armored vehicle and the individual man are not assets to preserve but ammunition to spend.
There is another aspect, too, that almost always escapes notice from afar and that here you can touch with your hands:?to get those vehicles and those men all the way to the line of contact, the Russians must have struggled mightily. Gasoline in Russia is rationed after months of Ukrainian strikes on refineries, and diesel at the front is counted liter by liter. This is the substantial difference from last year, and it is in this key that the final result must be read. Every kilometer of the rear is now beaten by a Ukrainian firestorm of reconnaissance drones that see everything, strike drones that hit everything that moves, and artillery that closes the roads. A column of fourteen vehicles that even manages to show up at its own jumping-off point for the assault is already, in itself, a logistical survivor: it means someone found the fuel, hauled it there canister by canister under a sky saturated with drones, gathered the vehicles scattered in their hides and moved them by night along roads that guided artillery knows so thoroughly by heart it has turned them into a lunar landscape.?To then consume that column in an hour, for the result everyone saw, gives the measure of the cost-benefit ratio the Russian command considers acceptable.
That this was no isolated episode is confirmed by what is happening right now: according to the National Guard’s “Rubizh” Brigade, which defends this sector together with the 1st “Azov” Corps,?the Russians are already?massingfresh forces toward Dobropillia. Only this time, their armor spent, they are relying on quad bikes and motorcycles: small, fast groups on two or four wheels — or on foot outright — trying to filter between positions, betting everything on speed and dispersion.?It is the same logic of infiltration, stripped even of its armored taxi. Dobropillia, after all, is the gateway to a logistical sector supplying Kramatorsk and Sloviansk that we know by heart: this is where the Russian design wants to arrive, and this is why men keep dying here in waves.
It is exactly the same thing the Russians are attempting — without success — at Kostiantynivka. There is no breakthrough there either; only small infiltrations: small groups that slip in and are driven out or eliminated one after another. Contrary to what is described by many self-styled analysts writing from another time zone without ever having seen a?terykon?in their lives, the few Russians present in the city are confined to the southern sector and have no possibility of doing anything: the then commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi,?spoke?little more than a week ago of no more than 145 men left inside the city limits, hunted by Ukrainian FPV drones and night bombers.?The ones firmly garrisoning the city’s bastion — the southern hinge of the fortress belt that shields the Kramatorsk agglomeration — are the Ukrainians. And yet the Kremlin?announced?as early as July 3, through Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov, its??full control??of Kostiantynivka. In that case too, a good share of the long-distance cartographers rushed to color in their maps accordingly. Though it?cost?two prisoners, the sweep of the city center —?carried out?this past July 18 — was real, and the city remains Ukrainian. Yet, people who do not even know what Kostiantynivka looks like — its sprawl, its industrial districts, the depth of its defenses — keep assigning it positions and percentages of control to this day, on the basis of more or less well-geolocated footage and milblogger claims. A city, even more than the front, is a volume: of streets, cellars, warehouses, mezzanines.?One hundred forty-five men scattered through a volume like that “control” nothing: they survive, for as long as they manage to.
One interesting detail. In mid-July, Ukrainian air assault brigades, with the support of adjacent units, conducted in the occupied part of Dnipropetrovsk region?one of the deepest Ukrainian offensive operations in recent memory, producing a 25-kilometer advance that?liberated?six villages — Ternove, Zaporizke, Novoheorhiivka, Vorone, Sichneve and Maliivka — and more than 120 square kilometers of territory: a weighty piece of the 743 square kilometers Ukrainian forces have?liberated?since the start of the year (a figure Syrskyi himself chose to put on the record in his farewell message on relinquishing command).
The way they did it is the exact reverse of the armored column burned at Dobropillia: no mechanized buildups, but dozens of small, dispersed, simultaneous assault groups, covered by an electronic warfare shield that blinded Russian reconnaissance drones while dedicated teams hunted the enemy’s drone crews and electronic warfare operators, triangulating their frequencies and passing the coordinates to artillery and hunter drones.
First you put out the enemy’s eyes; then you move through the volume those eyes can no longer see: that is how the Russian 656th Motorized Rifle Regiment was annihilated at its concentration points in Temyrivka, and how the 120th Naval Infantry Division, newly formed with personnel from the Baltic Fleet, suffered critical losses along with units of the 68th Army Corps. This was no twentieth-century “breakthrough” either: it was an infiltration conducted with method, one that emptied the enemy’s volume instead of trying to punch a hole in it.
The picture that emerges is consistent from one end to the other of the flank we are writing from.
In the volume, everyone advances by infiltration — but while the Ukrainians do it by first putting out the enemy’s eyes and sparing their own men, Russia no longer has the capacity — assuming it ever had it in this war — to conduct operations of that kind, and it compensates with the only resource its doctrine considers unlimited:?flesh.
The mechanized assault at Dobropillia is in no way the sign of a return to maneuver warfare: it is, if anything, its funeral — celebrated by burning, in a single afternoon, more armor than had been seen in months, to buy entry into the volume for a few dozen men who, in all likelihood, will never come out of it.
In 1.617 days of war, we recorded over 300 videos from ground zero and wrote more than 3,000 articles — at least 1,600 in English, and over 1,400 in Italian.
We’re doing our best to provide genuine, first-hand reports from zones where almost no press dares to go. This means living in a kill zone constantly. We take the risk, but without your invaluable support, our voices would remain unheard and silent. Without brave people sharing our articles from afar, they would remain unread. Our reports would go unseen, and our efforts would be lost. There’s still a lot of work to do here, as the people around us are also in no better situation.
We’re renewing our fundraising campaign and thanking everyone who joins us in helping to restore what Russia is destroying. Moving forward, not even with a small reimbursement for each article we write, is extremely challenging. That’s why we are grateful to all the kind people who support us and trust in our mission.
Even a small donation helps.
We’ll keep you updated on developments.
Thank you all, dear friends
在顿涅茨克的向日葵田里为机动作战举行的葬礼
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻译：旺财球球
乌克兰前线报道?
正如您即将在下文看到的，如今在前线记录这场战争，甚至只是活下来，都变得越来越困难。倘若在过去?1,617?天里，我们还能继续讲述这里发生的一切，这一切都离不开那些支持我们的人。对此，我们怀着最深切的感激。
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克拉马托尔斯克，顿涅茨克?——?几天前，在多布罗皮利亚方向，俄军做了一件他们已有很长时间没做的事：他们向乌军阵地发起了一次真正的、全规模机械化冲锋，坦克在前，支援车辆在后。尽管防守方自己最先承认了这一点，但当时我们无法核实，因此我们更愿意等到重返这里，来到顿巴斯最激烈的乌克兰阵地，再将多个层面的直接证词与我们在实地观察到的情况进行交叉验证。
这是数月来在顿涅茨克南翼所有地段最大的一次装甲突破尝试之一。而结局也不难被人们所料：俄罗斯装甲残骸在向日葵田中熊熊燃烧，士兵尸体散落其间。
统计结果毫无含糊：敌方投入的九辆坦克全部被摧毁，连同其配属车辆一并损失殆尽，包括两辆装甲战斗车和三辆BM-21“喀秋莎”多管火箭发射车。其中一些T-72B3是2022年现代化版本，甚至装配了据称能拦截来袭威胁的Arena-M主动防护系统：但看来它对逐一锁定并袭击其已知弱点的乌克兰FPV无人机无济于事。此次行动中受伤或阵亡的俄军人数达数十人，但正是在这一点上，我们有必要明确说明：不应用二十世纪的视角来解读此事，把它归档为一次被击退的装甲进攻、一次失败的突破。
这类进攻的目的不是突破。也不可能是突破，原因很简单：根本不存在一条可供突破的线性前线。
我们曾解释说，在这场战争中，前线不再是一条线，而是一个空间：一条几十公里纵深的带状地带，双方都在此密集部署无人机、传感器和埋伏的小规模步兵队伍。直接后果正是如此：在这样一个空间里，你不再是“突破”，而是“渗透”。双方都如此。于是装甲纵队的作用不再是用来撕开防线，它的作用是在装甲掩护下并利用进攻的混乱，将几十名步兵运送到深处，即使车辆被摧毁也在所不惜。那些坦克残骸不过是装甲的一次性载具，一次性出租车，用来实施渗透而已。
这些步兵渗透到乌方敌后后做的事，我们去年在多布罗皮利亚就用视频实地记录过：他们藏在地窖、林带和农舍里，杀害农民和整个家庭，等待其他小组陆续渗入并与之会合，试图逐步累积兵力，以便在远程合成的地图上宣称自己在某处“推进”。与此同时，他们被乌克兰的无人机与搜索小组逐一追捕。我们长期所描述的，是一种渐进式的相互消耗战，在这种战斗中对地面的占领不再以地图上画出的线来衡量，而以谁能让对方在该空间内无法生存为准。
在这里，算术变得惊人。
为了积累这些渗透行动所需的人力，俄军在此前数月在该方向付出了巨大的人员损失，在乌克兰火力覆盖区域不断进行的小规模突击击，如同持续不断的失血。
而在这次行动中，他们又损失更多，其模式与先前一波波被送进乌军绞肉机的攻击几乎一模一样，以至于我们几乎可以原封不动的把去年在同一地区为记录同类攻击而写的文章重新发表一遍。关键就在这里：为了将数十名士兵渗透到乌克兰阵地之后，莫斯科愿意损失十四辆机械化车辆，其中九辆是坦克，并在此基础上再付出更多士兵的生命。
这是一种将牺牲性发挥到极致的学说，在这种学说下，连单个装甲车辆和单个士兵都不是需要保存的资产，而是可消耗的弹药。
还有另一个方面，远处观察时往往被忽略，而在这里你可以亲身感受到：要把那些车辆和人员送抵接触线，俄方必然费尽周折。由于乌克兰对炼油厂的数月打击，俄罗斯的汽油已经受到配给限制，前线柴油按升数精打细算使用。这是与去年相比的实质差别，也正是理解最终结果的关键所在。如今俄罗斯后方的每一公里都被乌克兰的火力网络覆盖，侦察无人机可发现一切目标、攻击无人机可打击一切移动对象，以及炮火可封锁道路。能够出现并到达自身突击出发点的十四辆车的车队，本身就已是一个后勤上的幸存者：意味着有人在无人机密布的天空下，一桶一桶地找到了燃料并运送到那里，集中散藏的车辆并在夜间沿着被敌方观察和火力深度熟悉、已被轰炸的如月球表面般的道路转移它们。然后在一小时内将那支纵队消耗殆尽，得到的结果正如人们所见，这足以说明俄方指挥层认为可接受的成本收益比是什么。
眼下发生的事情证实，这并非一次孤立事件：据与第1“亚速”军团一同防守该地段的国民警卫队“鲁比日”旅称，俄军已在向多布罗皮利亚集结新兵力。只是这次，因装甲已耗尽，他们改为依靠四轮摩托和摩托车：规模小而快速的两轮或四轮小队，或者直接徒步，试图在阵地之间穿插，以速度与分散度博命。这是同样的渗透逻辑，甚至连装甲出租车都没有了。毕竟多布罗皮利亚是通往我们熟悉的供给克拉马托尔斯克和斯洛维扬斯克的后勤保障区的门户：俄方的目标就是到达这里，这也是为何这里有人一波又一波地死去。
（图：我在乌克兰顿涅茨克科斯坦丁尼夫卡拍摄了这张照片?——版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
俄军目前在科斯坦丁尼夫卡所做的尝试完全相同，但未能成功。那里也没有突破；只有小规模渗透：小股士兵溜进去后被逐个驱逐或歼灭。与很多身在另一个时区、自命为分析家却一辈子从未见过土堆的人所描述的不同，市内为数不多的俄军被限制在南部区域，根本无法开展任何行动：乌克兰武装部队原总司令奥列克桑德尔·希爾斯基在一周多前提到，城内仅剩约145名俄军，他们被乌克兰FPV无人机与夜间轰炸机追击。真正牢牢守卫这座城市据点，仍然是乌军，保护克拉马托尔斯克聚集区的堡垒带南翼。然而克里姆林宫早在7月3日便通过普京发言人德米特里·佩斯科夫宣布对科斯坦丁尼夫卡的“全面控制”。于是，很多远程制图者急忙在地图上据此涂改颜色。尽管在7月18日对市中心的清扫行动付出了两名俘虏的代价，行动确有其事，城市仍在乌方控制之下。但至今那些根本不知道科斯坦丁尼夫卡长什么样的人，不了解它的广阔、它的工业区以及防御纵深，仍旧凭借或多或少定位的影像和军事博主的说法，不断为其划定战线位置和控制分比。一座城市，甚至比前线更是一个空间体：街道、地窖、仓库、夹层空间。散布在这样一个空间中的一百四十五人“控制”不了什么：他们只是尽可能地生存下去，直到撑不住。
（图：我在顿巴斯撰写本文前拍了这张照片?——版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
有一点值得注意。七月中旬，乌克兰空降旅在相邻部队的支援下，于被占领的第聂伯罗彼得罗夫斯克州境内发动了近年来最纵深的进攻行动之一，取得了向前推进25公里的战果，解放了六个村庄：特尔诺韦、扎波里斯克、诺沃赫奥尔希耶夫卡、沃罗内、锡赫内韦和马利伊夫卡，以及120多平方公里的领土：这是乌方自年初以来解放的743平方公里中的一块重要组成，这是希爾斯基在卸任时在告别声明中亲自列明的数字。
他们的作战方式与在多布罗皮利亚被烧毁的俄罗斯装甲纵队正好相反：没有机械化集结，而是数十个小而分散的突击小组同时行动，受到电子战屏蔽的掩护，使俄方侦察无人机失明，与此同时，专门小组展开猎杀敌方的无人机编组与电子战操作员，三角测定其频率并将坐标传给炮兵和猎杀无人机。
首先让敌人的“眼睛”失效；然后在这些“眼睛”看不见的空间中移动：这就是俄军656摩托化步兵团在特米里夫卡集结点被歼灭的方式，也是新组建、来自波罗的海舰队人员的第120海军步兵师与第68军团部队一道遭受重创的方式。这也不是二十世纪意义上的“突破”：这是一场精心设计的渗透，逐步清空敌方的空间，而不是试图在战线上打一缺口。
（图：我在撰写本文前拍的照片?——版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
从我们所报道的整个战线侧翼来看，呈现的图景是一致的。
在这个空间里，人人通过渗透前进，但乌克兰人的方式是先让敌人的“眼睛”失明，从而尽量减少自方伤亡；俄罗斯则已不再具备（若其在这场战争中曾有过的话）开展此类行动的能力，只能以其学说中被视为无限的唯一资源来弥补：人力。
多布罗皮利亚的机械化突击绝非机动作战回归的标志；如果非要说什么的话，它更像是机动作战的葬礼，在一个下午内烧毁了数月来罕见的大量装甲，以换取少数几十名士兵进入战场空间的机会，而这些人很可能永远无法再走出来。
（图：我在顿巴斯撰写本文前拍的照片?——版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
***
在1617天的战争中，我们从前线录制了300多段视频，并撰写了3000多篇文章——其中至少1600篇?为英文，1400篇为意大利文。
我们尽最大努力从几乎没有媒体敢进入的地带进行真实的一手报道，这意味着我们长期生活在“杀伤区”。我们承担风险，但若没有你们宝贵的支持，我们的声音将无从传出。若没有远方的勇敢的人们转发分享我们的文章，它们将无人问津。我们的报道会被忽视，我们的努力将付诸流水。这里还有大量工作要做，周围的人们境况同样艰难。
我们正在更新筹款活动，感谢每一位加入我们、帮助修复俄罗斯破坏的人们。仅靠一家勇敢的报纸为我们每篇文章支付微薄稿酬以维持前线报道极为困难。因此，我们感激所有支持并信任我们使命的善良人们。
哪怕是小小的捐助也有助益。
我们会持续为你们更新事态进展。
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