Ukraine's Only Challenger 2 Brigade Is Rushing South to Block a Major Russian Offensive

The 82nd Air Assault Brigade is among the Ukrainian reinforcements deploying around Kostyantynivka

82nd Air Assault Brigade photo

For a whole bloody year, Russian field armies have been trying—and failing—to capture a trio of settlements in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast just east of the main Ukrainian fortress belt threading north through Kramatorsk.

The Russians have lost thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles, and yet Chasiv Yar, Toretsk and Pokrovsk remain contested—or fully in Ukrainian hands in the case of Pokrovsk.

Russian commanders are surely frustrated. And you can imagine how rank-and-file Russian troops feel.

When Russian motorcycle troops finally found a soft spot in Ukrainian defenses just west of Toretsk a few weeks ago, the Russians finally had an outlet for their pent-up feelings—and their first opportunity in months to achieve a breakthrough that could carry them through Kostyantynivka, the next nearest major settlement, toward Kramatorsk.

But every action has a reaction, and the Ukrainian armed forces are now surging reinforcements into the Kostyantynivka sector. Some of those reinforcements are traveling south from Ukraine’s border with Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

They include troops who recently retreated from now-erased Ukraine’s 250-square-mile salient in Kursk, which collapsed in late February when an elite Russian drone group severed the only major supply route into the salient.

On or just before April 17, an unprecedented 150 Russian bike troops—reinforced by additional troops riding in soft-skinned all-terrain vehicles—stormed positions held by the Ukrainian 14th Chervona Kalyna Brigade around Myrolyubivka, a few miles east of Pokrovsk.

The insane bike assault ended in disaster for the Russian bikers. The 14th Brigade “delivered a decisive blow against waves of Russian equipment and manpower,” the Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine reported.

The Ukrainian brigade reported heavy Russian losses, including:

• at least 240 troops killed or wounded;

• 96 motorcycles knocked out along with

• 21 armored vehicles,

• 2 other vehicles and

• 2 artillery pieces.

But the Ukrainian victory was short-lived. It’s standard practice, as the wider war grinds into its fourth year, for Russian regiments to send under-trained, unprotected troops on “reconnaissance-by-force” missions in the early hours of a planned offensive.

“These are ordered to advance towards where they assess Ukrainian positions to be, conducting reconnaissance by drawing fire,” Nick Reynolds and Jack Watling explained in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.

“If the group encounters resistance, Russian commanders assess where they believe the best lines of approach are, and in particular, where the boundaries between defensive units lie,” Reynolds and Watling added. “If Ukrainian positions are positively identified, sections are persistently sent forward to attack positions.”

More Russian troops from the 8th Combined Arms Army and other nearby field armies rolled into action through the wreckage of the 150-bike assault. And in a heady month of relentless assaults, the Russians advanced through Myrolyubivka to the outskirts of Yablunivka, 15 miles to the northeast and just six miles from Kostyantynivka.

5th Assault Brigade photo

Salient factors

It’s a salient, just like the kind the Ukrainians carved out of Kursk in August. Salients represent opportunity and risk for the attackers. Widen a salient, and an attacker can capture a wide area. Fail to widen it, and the salients’ flanks practically invite counterattacks—as happened in Kursk.

The Russians are rushing additional forces toward the salient outside Kostyantynivka. But so are the Ukrainians. Some or all of more than a dozen Ukrainian brigades are taking up positions around the salient.

Among them are several elite formations including the 82nd Air Assault Brigade with its precious few British-made Challenger 2 tanks and the aggressive 5th Assault Brigade. Other Ukrainian brigades in the sector include at least two newly reorganized heavy mechanized brigades—the 5th and 117th—that traded away some of their tanks for additional mobile infantry.

If the rhythm of the battle seems familiar, it’s because it is. Russian troops advanced into Toretsk back in August and seemed certain to consolidate their control over the ruined city.

But the Ukrainian reinforcements, including the Presidential Brigade and the 42nd Mechanized Brigade, turned the tide. Today, Toretsk is still very much contested. The Russians probed Myrolyubivka in part because they were bogged down in Toretsk—and couldn’t advance toward Kostyantynivka from the devastated city.

“Despite what appeared to be the end for Toretsk and surrounding areas at the end of 2024, the fighting continues in Toretsk and the outskirts six months later,” Ukraine Control Map explained. “Thousands of Russians have died for this ruined town that should have been a week-one objective back in 2022.”

“To the west of it, though, Russian forces have advanced,” Ukraine Control Map added. “Reinforcements have arrived, however, so we’ll see how much damage the Ukrainians can do.”

In a perverse sense, the Ukrainians are lucky they got beat in Kursk. The reinforcements that may save Kostyantynivka and Kramatorsk spent months clinging to their fragile salient in Kursk. If the Russian Rubicon drone group hadn’t deployed in February and quickly severed the Ukrainians’ supply lines with a devastating swarm of attack drones, units such as the 82nd Air Assault Brigade might still be in western Russia.

Instead, they’re on the front line in Donetsk, lending their weight to the stiffening Ukrainian defenses in the oblast. Defenses that are about to be tested as more Russian troops exploit their best opportunity in months.

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