Day 1110

On 9 March, the biggest news comes from the Toretsk direction.

Here, as Russian forces in Toretsk struggled to hold their crumbling defenses, Ukrainian troops launched a decisive push into the town’s southern microdistrict. What followed was a swift and brutal assault as elite Ukrainian units overran exhausted Russian fighters, reclaiming key ground in the battle for control.

The goal of the Ukrainian forces is to completely retake control of the city and liberate it after their previous counterattacks proved successful. The Russian forces in the town have exhausted themselves from almost a year of constant and costly urban combat, exposing weak points for the Ukrainians to exploit.

Ukrainian forces have exhausted the Russians by draining their resources and manpower while attempting to conserve their own, in carefully executed defensive operations and offensive raids to compensate for their initial numerical disadvantage. After nine months of brutally executed defense, this is now allowing the Ukrainians to finally turn the tables and launch their counterattacks from the strongholds they had pulled back to.

The main advantage of the Ukrainian forces is that they are deploying elite units like the Lyut brigade, which specializes in close-quarters combat and assault operations. In contrast, Russians have relied on poorly equipped and undertrained forcibly conscripted soldiers from the Donetsk puppet state. Russian sources reported that after nearly a year of fighting, the Donetsk Peoples Reublic Army Corps, integrated into the Russian military as the 8th combined arms army, had been completely depleted and almost entirely eradicated during the battle for Toretsk, exposing gaps in the Russian line.

The Russian forces have no advantages that could allow them to effectively counter the Ukrainians at this point, as the months of heavy fighting have destroyed Toretsk to rubble with little infrastructure left standing. This means that the Russian forces cannot achieve numerical superiority anymore as they would need to conceal their forces in spacious houses, high-rise residential buildings, and industrial facilities, which have been destroyed by past fighting, allowing deployment of small squads only.

Russians are severely disadvantaged without numerical superiority on the contact line, as Ukrainian small infantry assault groups are often much better prepared, equipped, and trained. These conditions allowed the Ukrainians to turn the tide of the battle, deploying powerful mechanized assaults in the southern part of Toretsk. The Russian defenses here are the weakest, with insufficient numbers, made up of unmotivated Russian conscripts scattered in the basements of one-story residential houses.

Geolocated combat footage from the area reveals how the Ukrainian forces conducted successful attacks in the southern part of Toretsk, deploying several squads of stormtroopers on board of M113 armored personnel carriers to assault Russian positions.

The footage shows that this time, Russians were able to hit and disable the vehicle, but only after it had already deployed a fresh group of soldiers. As Russians later conducted a follow-up strike to ensure the vehicle could not be evacuated, repaired, and returned to service, it can be seen with all the hatches and crew compartments open, indicating that the NATO-supplied vehicle withstood the initial hit, and allowed the crew to make it out alive.

As the Russian lines in Toretsk crumbled, with Ukrainians securing more ground, the Russian forces started panicking in fear of a total frontline collapse and a Ukrainian breakthrough. For this reason, they decided to deploy elements of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division to reinforce their defenses in the city. Units of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division have been engaged since the beginning of the war, with their most recent deployment being at the Pokrovsk direction, where they sustained severe losses in manpower and equipment. Their deployment for urban fighting in Toretsk means they will sustain even heavier losses, as this Russian contingent of forces had already depleted its combat capabilities in Pokrovsk.

Overall, the Russian defenses in Toretsk keep crumbling with continued Ukrainian territorial gains and desperate attempts of the Russian command to salvage the situation. The deployed Russian reinforcements are inadequate for countering the Ukrainian advance, as they consist of already depleted forces, which will result in fragmented Russian operations at Toretsk. This will allow the Ukrainians to maintain the tactical initiative, tightening the noose around the Russian-controlled center of Toretsk.

In our daily 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.

Read also:

• Frontline report: Ukraine recaptures part of strategic Chasiv Yar as new French VEB armor doubles combat power
• Frontline report: Russian logistics network collapses under Ukrainian drone campaign near Pokrovsk
• Frontline Report: Ukrainian raids unravel months of Russian gains in Toretsk