Don's Weekly, 21 October 2024: Part 4
by Donald Hill
(…continued from Part 3…)
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Operation Shovel
This is an hour long video of Operation Shovel, an assault on a position outside Pervomaiske by Chosen Company on August 23, 2023. (All graphic images are blurred). Against the backdrop of the Battle of Avdiivka, this was a very small engagement, but the video shows the level of detail needed for a competent unit to conduct an offensive operation. There are many competent units in the Ukrainian army. This unit had the additional skill of recording and publishing the event, a key component for the fund raising that is necessary to equip Ukrainian units.
It was the third mission for the international unit attached to the 59th Brigade. The unit had personnel from multiple countries and they communicated in English. (I’ll still refer to them as Ukrainians as they are members of the Ukrainian army). In their second mission, out of the 40 personnel that took part, 26 were wounded and two were killed and the Russians declared that the Chosen Company was destroyed. For their part, Chosen wanted payback.
The order they received was to eliminate a Russian machine gun position at the corner of two tree lines. The Chosen Company leader was given permission to expand the mission to penetrate a little deeper and engage a 2nd position of ten Russians along the tree line and then isolate the 1st machine gun position and the12 Russians deployed there. In addition to the 14 men of Chosen Company, a six-man Ukrainian team would also attack from the front to lay down suppressive fire and hopefully convince the Russians to surrender, a task that would be much harder to perform in English. The defending Russians weren’t conscripts or prisoners, they were contract soldiers, and the Ukrainians wanted to interrogate them.
The risk of the mission is that they would have to survive the Russian defensive fires as they approached. The advantage is that if they did survive, attacking at multiple points would split the Russian fire and the Russians would have to defend from multiple directions. The confusion this ultimately caused during the battle led to the deaths of five of the Russians.
They had a week to plan the mission. In that time, the brigade commander tasked drone units to provide video of the position and the terrain that needed to be crossed to assault the position. The teams studied the videos and selected a route to conduct the assault. They conducted two route reconnaissance patrols on foot to determine the conditions of the ground that could not be seen by drones. The route was either cleared of mines and obstacles or altered to go around them.
After making a plan, they found a similar trench line behind friendly lines and conducted rehearsals of the assault so everyone was clear on their role and the objectives. No plan survives contact with the enemy, but a detailed plan provides the cohesion necessary for unified action and it multiplies the combat power of the unit.
Speed and aggressiveness were important components of the operation. The faster they moved, the less time the Russians had to call for indirect fire and drone support. And the faster they moved, the harder it would be for all the Russian weapons to hit them, so it was decided to drive the assault team up in armored HMMWVs. All of the assault team were familiar with every aspect of the mission but the drivers of the HMMWVs paid close attention to the drone footage of the terrain along the route to the Russian positions. Any delays due to being lost or unsure would increase the chances of being hit.
The other advantage of using HMMWVs is that it is human nature to fire at the largest threat. Once the infantry was dismounted, the machine guns on the vehicles would fire on the Russian positions to suppress them and the armored HMMWVs would draw the enemy fire. This would give the dismounted infantry time to move into the cover of the treelines and fight on equal footing.
In the last 600 meters, the lead driver realized that the terrain looked different on the ground than it did when viewing the drone footage, but he only needed to drive in a straight line forward at that point so he kept going. They started taking mortar, RPG and machine gun fire and one of the vehicles hit an unseen mine. There were no serious injuries so they began the assault. They had to move quickly from the open road to the cover of the tree line. While they were dismounting, they were taking fire from the position that the Ukrainians were supposed to be engaging but their driver dropped them off a few hundred meters short of where they should have been so they had to run into the fight.
Once the infantry was dropped off, the two remaining vehicles turned around and left. On their way back, one of the HMMWVs was hit by something but they were able to keep moving. Once they reached the safety of their lines they figured out that the turret had been penetrated on the left side by an RPG round that also went through the right side of the turret before exploding. The closest Russian position that could hit them from the left side was 450 meters away. Hitting a moving target at that range was either a really lucky or really good shot, especially when considering that RPGs fired from less than 100 meters away missed.
After gaining fire superiority (firing more bullets than the enemy), the assault teams moved into the trenches. In one situation, a team member provided overwatch while two other members prepared grenades, which left them unarmed for a few seconds. The problem is that they were in front of the member providing overwatch. If a Russian exposed himself to fire and they were between the Russian and the overwatching teammate, the teammate could not engage the Russian. Fortunately, a Russian appeared directly in front of the overwatching member. In the moment the Russian took to orient himself, he was likely shot.
If he was shot, he either wasn’t killed or wasn’t alone. Corners are dangerous in buildings and trenches. As a group leader approached the corner and started “pieing the corner” he was shot in the neck and crumpled backwards. He went into shock and asked if he was dead, the source of a common joke in the unit now. When he was assured that he wasn’t dead, he became concerned because he couldn’t move and feared he might be paralyzed. Five minutes later, some movement returned and with it came a lot of pain. Despite the pain, he was happy that he could move.
The shot came from 20 meters away and that same wounded Russian grazed another team member in the head, but that member was basically unhurt and threw a grenade less than a meter from the Russian. As the Russian leaned over to pick up the grenade it exploded and mortally wounded him. When the assault teams moved forward they could hear his last moans before bleeding out.
They proceed to clear various trenches with camouflage nets, vegetation and dark holes obscuring their vision. They are constantly communicating with each other, directing each other to watch one sector while they clear another, calling for a teammate to back them up as they move forward in a trench, yelling, “Frag out!” each time they throw a fragmentation grenade to warn their teammates. Halfway through the fight, two Russian drones exploded in near misses, so they grabbed the trench jammer from the injured group leader and one member was given the responsibility to turn it on any time a drone approached.
In several instances the Russians didn’t know where the Ukrainian soldiers were. In one case, a Russian put his weapon beside him on the ground and wasn’t quick enough when he was surprised by an advancing member of the assault team. In another case, a Russian was running in the trench towards a position occupied by the Ukrainian team and was killed before he realized it. In a third instance, three Russians were running from one Ukrainian group not realizing they were heading into another group. Two were shot and one ran unarmed past the Ukrainian doing the shooting. The Ukrainian feared he had shot his own members of another assault group. The unarmed Russian refused to surrender and ran back to where he came. By then, the Ukrainian saw his patches identifying him as Russian and since he refused to surrender he was engaged and killed.
After clearing most of the position, a Ukrainian drone spotted the location of several Russians and relayed that to the assault leader who passed it on to his troops. Russian troops that found cover in shell holes were shot or killed by grenades. Then the assault teams paused to establish command and control over all their elements.
When attacking an objective from two different sides there is a danger of meeting in the middle and shooting friendly soldiers. The control measure to prevent that was for each group to have a limit of advance, meaning they do not move beyond that point. The plan was for the groups on both sides of the bunker to talk to each other and determine who would remain stationary and who would clear the bunker, depending on the situation. Having cleared the bunker, that group would throw out a weighted yellow rag, indicating a friendly unit.
But they lost radio communications with one of their assault groups on the other side of the bunker. Since the drones impacted near that missing assault group, they were feared killed or injured and the decision was made to push through the limit of advance and take the bunker. Besides eliminating the last of the Russian opposition, it would give them an opportunity to treat any wounded survivors, if there were any.
The entire time they advanced they were concerned about friendly fire and called out before each time they threw a grenade. They cautiously moved forward and then one leader saw a ‘Non Stop’ being thrown at them from the other direction.
Non Stop is one of the energy drinks consumed by the Ukrainian military. This particular unit also saved the cans and filled them with explosives. In the past, they found the regular grenades weren’t always effective in bunkers if the Russians had just a little bit of cover from the fragmentation. But a big can of Non Stop explosives was effective with the bigger blast alone, without any fragmentation. Seeing the can of Non Stop being thrown in their direction was the first indication that someone from the missing assault team was still alive.
When the group leader called out, “Non Stop”, everyone knew what would follow and they quickly ran backwards and into shelter. The three seconds between scream and the detonation was enough time to find safety and they immediately started screaming, “Friendly!” The other team threw a yellow flag and communication was reestablished.
As a re-unified command, they finished clearing the rest of the trench system and exchanged information about the one “in-and-out” neck wound and the destroyed HMMWV, plus the drone strikes. They began preparing for a counterattack but instead were hit by 120 mm mortar rounds because the Russians either realized the position had fallen or they didn’t care about friendly casualties.
The Russians also fired artillery and tear gas rounds but the gas rounds didn’t land on them directly and the wind blew the gas away from them. The gas rounds were fired prior to a Russian counter attack being launched but Ukrainian artillery hit the attack before it reached the captured position and the survivors turned back.
While this was going on, their Swedish sniper started engaging targets at night in a tree line 600 meters away. The sniper called the Canadian over, long since recovered from his near miss, and had him fire automatic fire while he gave him corrections looking through his thermal site. The Canadian couldn’t see the target himself and the automatic fire didn’t hit any Russians, but the near misses caused them to move and expose themselves and the sniper would kill them while they moved (at a distance of 600 meters).
About six hours after the beginning of the operation they began their exfiltration in the dark. The soldier wounded in the neck was carried on a stretcher until they met up with an M113 ambulance and then everyone continued walking back to the assembly area.
They killed 22 Russians on the objective and the sniper killed six more in the adjacent position. They did not capture any prisoners.
Excellent write up and extremely fascinating.
Amazing how much time these little raids take in terms of planning and even execution.
Also are there actually any capable Russian soldiers or are they all incompetent? Mind you this is WWII as well - Russians were mainly tactically incompetent but their high level generals (eg Rokossovsky, Zhukov, Konev etc) were excellent which offset the incompetence of the troops and junior leaders in the Red Army.
Would it be fair to summarise this lively 4-part report as ‘the Russians aren’t having it all their own way’?