Russia’s campaign to take the small, eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, now likely nearing its culmination, looks in many ways like its grinding operations to take nearby cities such as Bakhmut or Avdiivka, where Russia lost over 100,000 troops for minimal gain.
But hidden behind the surface similarities, analysts say they see Russian forces making notable advancements in adapting to drone warfare in urban operations, with potential implications for Russia’s ability to take more land if and when Pokrovsk finally falls.
“The battle for Pokrovsk is really the first time we’re seeing what expanded drone warfare looks like in urban settings,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank.
In part, Russia has simply learned how to maneuver its infantry across a battlefield where Ukrainian drones can strike as many as 12 miles or more from the actual front line.
To lower the chance of drone detection, for example, Russia has taken to sending small groups of as few as two soldiers through Ukraine’s porous front line, said Can Kasapoglu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank. These soldiers travel by fast-moving motorcycles to further decrease the chance of a successful drone intercept.
Those two soldiers, nestled somewhere behind Ukrainian lines, then wait for more troops to join them, eventually building up enough forces to launch assaults.
In combination with these infantry assaults, Russia is also increasingly focused on identifying and killing Ukrainian drone operators, said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Russia has identified Ukrainian [drone] capabilities and [drone] teams as the center of gravity of the Ukrainian military,” he said. Ukraine is increasingly reliant on such operators, as its own infantry is undermanned.
To go after them, Russia sends its infiltration teams to eliminate them, as well as using drones, bombs dropped from planes, and artillery, he said. The focus is so intense that Russian artillery now targets Ukrainian drone teams more often than it targets Ukrainian infantry, he added.
In turn, strikes on Ukrainian drones can help Russian soldiers move forward. At least some Russian commanders time attacks on drone teams with infantry movements, Kasapoglu added. “They are trying to create windows for maneuver,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s own drone units have worked to strangle Ukrainian logistics by attacking vehicles moving into Pokrovsk, Stepanenko said. By doing so, they isolate sectors of the front line, pinning down units, starving them of supplies, and weakening their ability to defend against Russian attacks.
Behind Russia’s increasing drone dominance stands greater investment in specialized drone formations, like the elite Rubicon drone unit. Such units use a combination of drones, including reconnaissance and strike drones, which destroy their targets by crashing an explosive payload into them.
Russian drone pilots are also benefiting from increasing cooperation with China, Stepanenko said. Russia’s use of fiber-optic drones, which maneuver through signals sent through unjammable fiber-optic cables, depends on China’s capacity to manufacture the cables, she said. Meanwhile, Ukraine has found its access to much-needed Chinese drone components choked off.
Of course, not all of Russia’s successes near Pokrovsk are specifically related to drones. Russia has also learned to strike when Ukrainian units are rotating out their limited front-line troops, taking advantage of temporary gaps in Ukraine’s line, Kasapoglu said.
Ukraine’s shortage of infantry also means it must move troops from one front to the next in order to shore up gaps. That, in turn, leaves a weakness that Russia can exploit, Lee said. Ukraine’s stabilization of its lines near Dobropillya, for example, saw Ukraine draw troops from Pokrovsk—further enabling Russia to take ground there.
Still, Ukraine is scoring victories. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Nov. 9 said Russia had lost 25,000 soldiers killed or wounded in October alone, a figure similar to estimates of 20,000 Russian soldiers killed per month given by analyst Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
And for all those losses, Russia has not yet achieved its goal of encircling Ukrainian forces, in part because Ukraine has moved forces to stabilize the edges of the pocket in Pokrovsk. While that weakens other areas of the front line, those units may be enough to prevent encirclement, Lee said.
It’s also unclear as yet how well these tactics may work outside of the urban environment of Pokrovsk. Pokrovsk’s structures provide concealment to Russian infiltration teams, allowing them to gather in large enough numbers to then launch assaults. They also provide those soldiers protection from the Ukrainians’ relatively low-power drones, which can only pack a small amount of explosives, Stepanenko noted.
The open fields behind Pokrovsk, however, offer neither concealment nor cover, meaning that Ukrainian drones may be able to more easily identify and attack Russian infiltration groups, Lee said.
The incoming winter weather will also expose such groups to hypothermia, especially those initial groups that move and then settle in for as long as a week while they wait for other soldiers to join them, Lee said. Cloudy winter weather will also make it harder for Russian drones to spot Ukrainian logistics units moving, he added.
But no matter the tactical conditions, Lee said, Russia will have a card up its sleeve—its ability to move its larger army across the front line’s nearly 800 miles of length. “They’re going to advance wherever Ukraine is weakest,” Lee said.