Author: Mohan
On May 13, Kadyrov stated that with the support of the Russian firepower unit, the Chechen National Guard successfully captured the Popasnaya Fortress. From a military point of view, the Popasnaya Fortress is a transportation point connecting Northern Donetsk and Zaporozhye . After taking this place, Northern Donetsk can go west to Zaporozhye and Dnipro. Traffic was blocked.
At the same time, after crossing Popasnaya, the east gate of the Zaporozhye Plain has been opened. The defense situation of Zaporozhye has become serious. If you want to defend Zaporozhye, you have to hope that the Russian army will not Push further west.
The Ukrainian army in Zaporozhye originally only had the 110th Territorial Defense Brigade. In the early days of the war, it had several battles with the Russian BTG rapid detachment, and its strength had long been exhausted. In order to stabilize the situation, the Ukrainian army had to move the 59 Motorized Rifle Brigade Even so, the overall situation in Zaporozhye appears to be very calm compared to the rest of the front. Until the Russian army withdrew from Kiev , the Ukrainian army transferred to the reserve 63rd Motorized Infantry Brigade. After the 63rd Brigade arrived in Zaporozhye, it obviously underestimated the Russian army's reconnaissance and control capabilities on the battlefield, and lost more than 100,000 soldiers during the assembly. 35 tanks and armored vehicles , as well as several M777s, two mechanized infantry battalions and the attached fire detachment were disabled.
Originally, with one full brigade and two residual brigades, it could form a partial strength advantage over about 6-8 BTGs on the Zaporozhye-Berdyansk line and ease the Ukrainian army's defensive posture on the southern line. After this wave of operations, Become three remnant brigade. The Russian army, which withdrew from the Mariupol Encirclement and Suppression Battle, correspondingly transferred 2 or 3 BTGs. The strength was basically the same, but the heavy equipment and firepower delivery level had an absolute advantage.
Precisely because the two southeastern fronts failed at the same time, the Ukrainian army readjusted its deployment and deployed a reserve defense line in Artemovsk, Zaporozhye Oblast . It reorganized the defense line and could no longer take into account Severodonetsk and Lisichansk. 16,000 troops.
For Ukraine, compared to the military, the political impact of the loss of Popasnaya will be even worse than the loss of the entire Zaporozhye Oblast.
html On May 9, a woman whose husband served in the 115th Territorial Defense Brigade shouted on social media that Britain, the United States and other Western countries: They were bombed on the front line, they lacked heavy weapons, fortifications, food and medicine, they lacked everything, they are being blown to pieces, save them.
html Fourteen days later, this unit lost Popasnaya. Six days later, the brigade commander of this unit made a public speech, admitting that they were used as cannon fodder and deployed in the direction of the Russian attack arrow. The entire brigade was bombed and only the remaining More than seventy people had no food and water, no weapons and ammunition, and no position, so they had to surrender. I don’t know if the husband of the Ukrainian woman is among these 70 people.
This is not an isolated phenomenon. The 115th Brigade is the fourth of the 25 territorial defense brigades in Ukraine to surrender in the form of troops in the past month.
html The 1115 brigade originally belonged to the territorial defense force of the Zhytomir Region. It also supported Kiev in the early stages of the war and felt the excitement of "recovering" Kiev. As a result, it rushed to the Udong region to support and deployed in Popasnaya, getting close to the Chechen nationals. The battle between the Guards only lasted about a month before they were bombed and collapsed. This shows that the Russian army that stopped and fought steadily has strong firepower.
Most of these 25 territorial defense brigades absorb local fascist militia groups such as the Azov Battalion as the main force, with the escorts of financial oligarchs as the elite core. These troops are not only affiliated with the Kiev government of Ukraine, but also The core armament of state governments.
It is precisely because of this particularity that when the actor established the general headquarters of the 25 territorial defense brigades before the war, he chose Galushkin, a warrior who had repeatedly made military exploits on the front lines of Donbass since 2014, as the commander. Commander-in-chief of the troops. Relying on Galushkin's glorious image, in the early days of the war, the territorial defense brigades were expanded to varying sizes.These troops have also gradually separated from their original subordinate states to support areas with tight front lines such as Kiev and Wudong.
In places such as Kiev, Sumy, Nikolayev, as the Russian army expands, these territorial defense forces can often find good materials, such as regaining a certain place, or picking up Russian weapons in the forest. The tanks and armored vehicles abandoned by the army formed the core material of Ukraine’s early propaganda war, and were the highlight moments of these newly established territorial defense forces.
As the war continued, troops like the 115th Brigade began to move eastward to the Wudong area. The Russian army also changed its tactics at this time and adopted the conventional land warfare method of clearing the way with artillery and attacking steadily. The Ukrainian frontline command group obviously trusts the regular troops originally stationed in the eastern Ukraine area, and deploys these new forces from the rear in the front-line area to defend against Russian attacks. The original main force group is still stationed in the original solid position. This deployment principle has resulted in four brigades being bombed to collapse by the Russian army recently.
html On the same day as the public surrender of the 1115th brigade, the actor dismissed Galushkin and appointed Major General Tanchulla to take over as the commander-in-chief of the territorial defense forces. In the official announcement, Tantyura was described as an "experienced army commander" and his glorious deeds against the Russian army in Kherson and Zaporozhye. According to the Russian army, Tanchula is "a more mature, harsher, and more brutal warlord."
More open source information shows that Tantyura was appointed as the head of the 169th training center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Ground Forces "Desna", mainly responsible for cooperating with NATO officers to train the army and newly formed troops. When the actor appointed Tanchulla at this time, he should pay more attention to his connections. Whether it is connections with external forces such as NATO, or his connections within the Territorial Defense Forces, they will help stabilize the currently demoralized Territorial Defense Forces and prevent Further collapse of the force. At the same time, this also shows that the Ukrainian Kyiv government's initial goal of integrating domestic real power factions through the war has encountered setbacks. In the next step, actors are bound to have more games with these factions.
