A Ukrainian Brigade 'Fucked Off' in Ocheretyne, Letting a Russian Brigade Advance. Or Did It?
Militaryland.net's defense of the 115th Mechanized Brigade.
When the Russian army’s 30th Motor Rifle Brigade punched through Ukrainian defenses west of Avdiivka over the weekend and quickly advanced several miles, ultimately capturing the village of Ocheretyne and positioning Russian forces for their deepest penetration of Ukrainian lines in many months, the Ukrainian army’s 115th Mechanized Brigade caught much of the blame.
The brigade “just fucked off,” wrote Mykola Melnyk, a famed 47th Mechanized Brigade company commander who lost a leg during Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year. Allegedly abandoning their positions, the 115th Brigade troopers all but invited the Russians into Ocheretyne.
But it’s wrong solely to blame the 115th Brigade, according to “Jerome” at Militaryland.net, which closely tracks the Ukrainian military’s order of battle. “Apart from 115th Mechanized Brigade, there were two other units operating in the area,” Militaryland.net pointed out: the 104th Territorial Defense Brigade and the 425th Assault Battalion.
At least a battalion from the 115th Brigade held positions north of Ocheretyne, while the 425th Battalion defended the village’s southern flank—and a battalion from the 104th Brigade garrisoned the village itself.
“If you want to ask questions, then ask the commander of Tactical Grouping of Troops Donetsk … why he decided to deploy a single territorial defense battalion to defend such strategically valuable place,” Militaryland.net insisted.
Also ask why such a critical sector lacked a heavy unit with tanks and artillery, Militaryland.net urged. The 115th and 104th Brigades and the 425th Battalion all are infantry formations with only a few armored vehicles, and yet were tasked to defend Ocheretyne against a fully mechanized Russian brigade backed by several other mechanized regiments and brigades as well as, in reserve, a tank division—the 90th.
Left unsaid by Militaryland.net in its defense of the 115th Brigade is the Ukrainian military’s wider manpower and equipment crisis. While Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of fresh troops since widening its war on Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine has resisted full-scale mobilization—and only recently enacted a long-delayed law authorizing a significant round of conscription.
At the same time, the recently-ended six-month gap in major U.S. support for the Ukrainian war effort—a gap deliberately imposed by Russia-aligned lawmakers in the Republican Party—has deprived the Ukrainian military of potentially thousands of armored vehicles and hundreds of thousands of artillery shells.
It’s not necessarily the fault of the grouping commander that the defenders of Ocheretyne were too few and lacked heavy weaponry. It definitely is the fault of lawmakers in Kyiv and Washington, D.C.
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