The Russians Just Rolled A Whole Bunch of Old T-62 Tanks Toward Chasiv Yar
At least five got knocked out
After trying and failing to seize an important lodgement in Chasiv Yar, a battleground town in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces are stepping up their attacks around the town—and sending in large numbers of old T-62 tanks.
Upon finally occupying the ruins of Avdiivka back in February following a costly, five-month battle, the Russian army in Ukraine focused its troops, tanks and artillery on Chasiv Yar, on the Bakhmut axis 30 miles north of the Avdiivka axis.
Early in the battle in April, the Russian air force achieved local air superiority; Sukhoi Su-25 attack jets relentlessly rocketed the town. Incredibly, the outnumbered Ukrainian garrison held.
Eight months later in early December, the Russians nearly achieved a critical breakthrough when infantry assault groups briefly occupied Chasiv Yar’s refractory plant, a sprawling industrial site that anchors the town’s defenses.
By mid-month, however, Ukrainian counterattacks had ejected the Russians from the refractory plant, restoring the Ukrainian line. “Fighting continues for the refractory plant in the center of Chasiv Yar,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted. But now the Russians seem to have shifted their main effort to the south.
On or just before Dec. 26, a large Russian mechanized force attacked around the town of Klishchiivka, around five miles south of Chasiv Yar. It was “one of the largest assaults in recent times in the Bakhmut direction,” according to the Ukrainian 93rd Mechanized Brigade, which along with the 5th Assault Brigade and a few other units holds the line stretching south of Chasiv Yar.
“The offensive took place in two directions at once,” the 93rd Mechanized Brigade reported. “The enemy used heavy equipment such as BMP-2 [fighting vehicles] and T-72 tanks.” The combined effort of Ukrainian drone crews, mine-laying sappers, artillery gunners and mechanized troops halted the assaults.
“The enemy was completely defeated,” the 93rd Mechanized Brigade announced. The brigade claimed it knocked out six T-72 tanks and six BMP-2s. The 5th Assault Brigade reported nine kills: five T-62s, two BMP-2s and two BMP-1s.
The preponderance of T-62s—built as early as the 1960s, modernized in the 1980s and mostly stored by the early 2000s before losses in the current war made them valuable again—is notable. As Russian vehicle losses in Ukraine exceed 15,000 and Russian industry struggles to ramp up production of new vehicles, old Cold War vehicles—yanked from long-term storage—make up an increasing proportion of front-line assault groups.
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