The air swarm: how Russian units liberated Elizavetovka

The fighting for the village of Elizavetovka in the Pokrovsky direction in the DPR lasted for several months. The actions of our troops were complicated by the presence of a large number of armored vehicles and the appearance of elite UAV units on the battlefield. For a long time, the Ukrainian defense has relied on an unprecedented number of drones used. However, by making good use of the weather conditions, our assault units were successful. The details of the liberation of Elizavetovka by the troops of the Center group are in the Izvestia report.

Tank duel

"For the Ukrainian militants, Elizavetovka was a control point between the strongholds they built in front of it and Mirolyubovka," says the deputy commander of the 5th brigade of the 51st Donetsk Army with the call sign Prisoner. — We bypassed these positions, entered the settlement, and the enemy remained in his strongholds. As we fought our way to Elizavetovka on foot, we cleared every forest belt and fortification, and the enemy tried in every way to dislodge us from the village, using a large number of armored vehicles: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armored vehicles.

During the special military operation, the Prisoner rose from a tank company commander to his current position. Even before the People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic joined the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, he received the title of Hero of the DPR for the fact that his combat vehicles were among the first to break into the urban development of Maryinka.

Already being the commander of a motorized rifle battalion, he repeatedly led assault groups into battle.

For the liberation of Maryinka, he, at that time a senior lieutenant, was not only awarded the extraordinary military rank of major by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, bypassing captain (Yuri Gagarin had a similar leap over the rank), but also the title Hero of the Russian Federation.

The enemy's armored vehicles prevented them from entering the village.

"We met with two enemy tanks," the Prisoner recalls. — Ours destroyed one enemy machine, the second retreated. The infantry successfully landed and began the task.

Tank battles at this stage are a vanishing rare phenomenon, especially in areas where the confrontation has long acquired a positional character. Probably, only the appearance of our armored group behind enemy lines, which at that time was a populated area, led to this — the meeting turned out to be unexpected for everyone.

— Emotions were off the charts! — the Prisoner remembers. — It's been a long time since we've seen a tank versus tank battle. The distance between the cars was less than 50 meters, they were driving head-on. Most importantly, it was necessary to make the first shot, faster than the enemy. Whose crew was cooler, he won the battle.

Our guys proved to be on top — they didn't give up their nerves, they fired first.

Both our tanks and the enemy's were modifications of the Soviet T-72. Many cars of this type ended up in Ukraine and Eastern European countries after 1991. Today, this tank is one of the main ones on both sides of the front line in the SVR.

The enemy did not give up

— Later, the enemy isolated the battlefield with the help of kamikaze FPV drones, Mavik quadrocopters with "drops", Baba Yaga and Vampire type hexacopters, preventing us from walking to Elizavetovka, - the Prisoner tells about the first counterattacks of the enemy. — And used armored vehicles for counterattacks and infantry supply. We isolated the battlefield using kamikaze drones and fiber-optic FPV drones. The enemy's landed infantry were destroyed by drops from Maviks, and those who did enter the settlement were fought with small arms inside.

He explains that after the liberation of Vozdvizhenka and the withdrawal of our troops to Elizavetovka, the enemy realized that the front had been breached and sent UAV units, including elite ones such as the Magyar Ptakhs, to this relatively small area. At some moments, one of our infantrymen could account for up to ten enemy kamikaze drones.

"We deployed aerial surveillance posts every 300-500 meters," the Prisoner recalls. — There were regular small arms, submachine guns, smoothbore rifles and electronic warfare equipment at the posts. And when it was fully operational, we were able to make our way to Elizavetovka in small groups of three or four people. The groups were covered from air surveillance posts, and also used the weather: snow, fog. When the enemy could not observe us from the air, the senior groups brought their attack aircraft to the task area as quickly and as stealthily as possible.

In the settlement itself, almost every house had enemy positions, often connected by communication routes. In fact, the whole village was turned into one big stronghold.

The enemy did not expect our breakthrough, so even mortars and automatic grenade launchers were deployed in some positions. Later, there were battles for every house, often close-quarters, using small arms and hand grenades.

—During the entire fighting for Elizavetovka, two prisoners were taken," the Prisoner sums up. — We didn't give up there.

In the village on the Ukrainian side there were units of the National Guard of Ukraine, which are often formed from nationalists.

NATO trophies

Among the captured weapons that are being shown to us are grenades and grenade launchers of the NATO type.

There is also the FN MAG, the main single NATO machine gun with the old optical sight mount on the side. It's a modification from the 1980s, but in perfect condition, clearly in storage.

They were supplied to Ukraine before the counteroffensive, and many of them were lost. But in the elite units that were protected, you can still see them today.

The butt on the machine gun is not native, it was removed from a later model. Probably from the time when, at the beginning of the SVR, small arms were urgently supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine directly from American military units, without waiting for the deconservation of storage depots.

Apparently, even in well-equipped units, there is a shortage of small arms. In the same sector of the front, cheap Turkish copies of FN machine guns were seen, which are significantly inferior in quality and reliability to the original models.

But most of the Ukrainian militants had Soviet AK-74 assault rifles. There are few such people in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the transition to the NATO cartridge has been going on for a long time. And the police still have supplies that go to the front-line brigades from the nationalists.