Today, there are a lot of interesting updates from the Lyman direction, Donetsk Oblast.
Here, Russian troops near Lyman are growing increasingly desperate to evade Ukraine’s expanding network of thermal drones, detecting their movements and attempted infiltration assaults every step of the way. Their latest attempt at concealment: crude, improvised, and almost unbelievable, ended exactly the way you might expect.
Try and try again! Ukraine’s AI drones defeat Russian electronic warfare in new Kursk offensive
The goal of the Russian forces in this area is to take the town of Lyman to eliminate Ukrainian control east of the Donets and Oskil rivers, and facilitate larger future operations in taking the Donbas.
On the northern flank, the Russians are trying to expand their foothold over the Zherebets River. Meanwhile, to the south, Russians are stuck in the Serebryanski forest due to a tight network of Ukrainian bunkers. However, in the center, the 60th mechanized brigade has held the line for the past 2 years, as Russians try desperately to break through for a direct advance on Lyman.
To hold the line, the 60th mechanized brigade’s soldiers used remote mining to scatter landmines on Russian avenues of attack, heavily complicating their logistics and disrupting mechanized assaults before they could reach Ukrainian lines.
Furthermore, raids carried out by elite infantry assault units in combination with drone reconnaissance allow the Ukrainians to detect and eliminate Russian forces in fortified trench networks that may be preparing for assaults. So instead, Russians are relying on small infantry assault groups to infiltrate through the tree lines, forests, and settlements, making them much harder to detect.
To counter this, Ukrainian forces use drones equipped with infrared and thermal cameras to detect Russian troop movements by identifying heat signatures, even through forest cover and natural concealment, giving them a significant advantage in terms of reconnaissance. The utility of these thermal imaging drones is twofold, as they not only detect Russian movements during the day, but also at night, effectively diminishing any conventional Russian concealment they try to take advantage of.
Despite Russian efforts to use suits and blankets to camouflage their heat signatures, Ukrainian drones have demonstrated the ability to identify and target such concealed soldiers regardless. While the thermal cloaks reduce the heat signature of Russian soldiers, the silhouette of the cold spots is often still visible, allowing for their detection if Ukrainians can spot these dark spots in time.
However, these countermeasures are still very effective, but as most Russian units do not have thermal cloaks, Russians had to get creative, finding new and strange ways to try and infiltrate Ukrainian lines without detection.
Some Russian soldiers took desperate measures, camouflaging themselves with simple trash bags, which was a natural recipe for disaster. The frontline, especially areas surrounding dense trenchlines and positions, is surrounded by scattered trash used by soldiers on both sides, so trash bags are common to see.
However, human-sized trash bags walking and stopping out in the open are less common, immediately triggering red flags for Ukrainian drone operators monitoring the line. Because the trash bags also completely blinded them to their surroundings, they were unaware they had already been spotted by Ukrainian drones, and that Ukrainian FPVs were rapidly approaching their location, killing them both nearly simultaneously.
Unfortunately for Russians, the detection and subsequent destruction of these two soldiers correctly alerted Ukrainians to the fact that Russians might launch further assaults in the area. As Ukrainian drones took to the skies, they were easily able to detect the virtually blind Russian soldiers running around, hiding under the plastic coverings.
Deaf to the Ukrainian drones hanging above them, they were easy targets for drone-dropped grenades. In the end, the 60th mechanized detected and destroyed 14 Russian trash bag wearing soldiers in the fields and tree lines, as once again another Russian ploy had failed.
Overall, the Ukrainians’ use of drones with thermal imaging forced Russian soldiers to resort to the most desperate measures, using trash bags in attempts to cross the grey zone unnoticed and attack Ukrainian positions.
However, their concealment attempt quickly turned into a disaster as the Ukrainians found the walking trash bags suspicious, hunting them down, and alerting them to other assault groups moving in. With the 60th mechanized brigade continuing to strongly hold the line, Russians are being forced to continue their assaults in areas with either overstretched supply lines, or hidden Ukrainian bunkers throughout the forest.
In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
