On assignment for @thetimes in Donbas, I met recon teams from Ukraine’s Black Forest Brigade, who call in Storm Shadow and HIMARS strikes deep behind enemy lines. Although the Russians are still driving forward here, the brigade is making them pay a heavy price… 1/
Lt Kostyantin is a Black Forest platoon commander, using UK and Ukrainian unmanned aircraft to hunt targets. On discovery, they pass the target co-ordinates back to other units equipped with UK and US long-range missiles launched by jets or multiple launch rocket systems. 2/
His teams are equipped with Tekever AR3 reconnaissance drones, supplied by Britain, which are catapulted into the air for take-off and can stay in the sky for up to 16 hours. Often their search areas are determined by the provision of western intelligence. 3/
Storm Shadow strikes are not like his team’s other kills, Kostya told me. After HIMARS, there is usually chaos: Russians running from the smoke clouds and the wounded crawling through debris. With SS, “There was a big boom and a big hole in the ground. No one was left moving.” 4/
In October, his platoon located a powerful Nebo-M radar station in Russian-held eastern Ukraine, capable of scanning the skies hundreds of miles west in Ukrainian-held territory. Russia is only believed to have ten of the systems, each of which costs an estimated $100 million. 5/
Kostyantin’s drones were in the air for only 50 minutes before he discovered the station and called in a devastating strike by US-supplied Atacms long-range missiles. A month later, President Biden authorised the use of the missiles to strike targets inside Russia. 6/
Led by Colonel Oleksandr Popov and arranged according to Nato command structure, the brigade has had a successful war, claiming kills of about 30 air defence systems including an S-400 anti-aircraft missile battery, once considered the world’s best air defence system. 7/
The brigade’s deployment of advanced Nato systems to deplete the Kremlin’s forces showcases their battlefield potency and the impact that similar systems such as German Taurus missiles could have, should these long-range weapons be provided to Ukraine at scale. 8/
Their efficacy also underscores the frustration felt by Ukrainian commanders over the delay in their arrival, restrictions on their use and the limited supply. Donald Trump has said he is opposed long-range strikes inside Russia altogether, suggesting there may be no more. 9/
You can read the rest of the dispatch here:
How Ukraine’s Black Forest brigade use spy drones to lethal effect
EXCLUSIVE: Ukraine’s 1st Army Corps has encircled hundreds of Russian troops in three pockets after they broke through Ukrainian lines around the town of Pokrovsk, and are methodically wiping them out. Extracts from today’s report in @thetimes below: 1/
Inside the underground headquarters of Ukraine’s 1st Azov Army Corps, its chief of staff rolls up secret battle plans from the table, then gestures to a large screen with a digital map that details the fight for Pokrovsk in real time. 2/
“Here, here and here we cut them off, they are tactically encircled,” says Lieutenant Colonel “Lemko”, gesturing to a point where the Russians broke through to the town’s northeast last month. His map shows the Russian infantry cut off in three pockets by Ukrainian forces… 3/
Putin installed his cousin as deputy defence minister and her husband as energy minister because he no longer trusts Russian officials to prosecute his war on Ukraine, according to an intelligence assessment shared with me for @thetimes…. 1
The assessment concludes a 21-page dossier on Anna Tsivileva (née Putina) authored by Ukraine’s military intelligence service, HUR, which routinely compiles research into top enemy officials in order to inform military plans... 2/
The authors believe she reports corruption and disloyalty directly to Putin. Although he consolidated power through a corrupt system to distribute wealth among elites in the security services, he has realised the level of graft is inimical to winning the war, the dossier says. 3/
Over three days I embedded for @thetimes with a Ukrainian female fighting force shooting Russian drones over Kyiv and training to meet Putin's summer offensive head on. 1/6
We saw how Russia's war has turned suburban mums into warriors. These women have so much to lose, so I wanted to understand what motivates them to risk their lives. 2/6
At a time when the US is pulling women back from combat, Ukraine wants more ready to join units on the frontlines. So what really drives these women soldiers, what makes them ready to kill and be killed? 3/6
Between assignments in Ukraine, I’ll now be reporting for @thetimes from the Balkans, another area where societies are struggling to break free from Russia’s malign influence. In Serbia, the situation has recently taken a turn for the worse. 1/
Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vucic has thrown his country’s future in the European Union into doubt by suggesting it could hold a referendum to instead join Brics, the global economic bloc hosted in Russia this week by Vladimir Putin. 2/
Belgrade has long performed an East-West balancing act, but with the war in Ukraine forcing the world to take sides, the scales are tilting evermore toward the Kremlin. Serbia refuses to join EU sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. 3/
I spent much of last week with the men and women of Ukraine’s equivalent of US Navy SEALs, elite divers from the 73rd Naval Special Operations Centre, on assignment with @thetimes. The 73rd conduct reconnaissance and sabotage operations deep behind Russian lines… 1/
…using stealth to infiltrate coastal defences underwater and mount surprise raids on high value targets. They have been wreaking havoc on Putin’s troops as Ukraine tries to drive Russia from its territorial waters. 2/
Operating in the black of night under the waves, a compass, watch, depth gauge and mental arithmetic are their only guides. Tugging on a rope strung out between them is their only form of communication under water. 3/
I spent a week for @thetimes with Ukraine’s elite 47th Mechanised Brigade, equipped with M1 Abrams, M2 Bradleys and Paladin artillery. They told me they’re in “deep shit” in the Pokrovsk sector, where the Russians have advanced 6km towards the Donbas town in just over a week.
Gulf War era US Bradleys have proved perhaps the most effective fighting vehicle of the war, their armour saving hundreds, if not thousands of lives, and chewing up Russian BMPs and infantry with their Bushmaster 25mm autocannon.
But Ukraine doesn’t have enough, so relies on the brigade that lead the summer counteroffensive and held defensive lines at Avdiivka to hold at Pokrovsk. They are thinned out by casualties and exhausted, and they keep having to pull back when flanks held by weaker units collapse.