August 6, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. EDT
One of many fight items of the SBU’s Particular Operations Middle “Alpha” combating on the Jap Entrance of Ukraine on June 20. 2023. (Sasha Maslov/For The Washington Publish)Touch upon this storyComment
ZAPORIZHZHIA REGION, Ukraine — A few of Ukraine’s most elite particular forces at the moment are working barely again from the entrance line — with virtual-reality glasses that give a drone’s-eye view.
Final yr, there have been alternatives to creep into Russian-occupied territory at evening to take out enemy targets. Now, with huge minefields and different fortified Russian defenses stalling Ukraine’s sweeping counteroffensive, a UAV armed with explosives does that in daylight as a substitute.
A Ukrainian particular forces staff in July 2023 manually directed a drone to hit a cluster of antennas affixed to a tower in a city occupied by Russian troops. (Video: Alpha Unit)
A 3-man staff final month manually directed a drone to hit a cluster of antennas affixed to a tower in Polohy, a city occupied by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia area. The Russians have been utilizing the digital warfare system to spoil the work of Ukraine’s satellite-guided rockets.
The drone, product of Styrofoam-like materials and costing $1,500, crashed into one of many antennas, detonating on contact. With the Russians’ jamming skill instantly disrupted, the Ukrainians then destroyed the tower with a strike from a U.S.-provided Excessive Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. The missile slammed into the construction with the kind of precision the Ukrainians have come to depend on of their 17-month struggle to expel the Russian occupiers. However had the drone not disabled one of many antennas first, the HIMARS rocket possible would have missed.
That kind of operation has develop into a trademark of particular forces items such because the Safety Service of Ukraine’s “A,” or Alpha, division, which not too long ago granted Washington Publish journalists uncommon entry to their groups helping common army brigades in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which now stretches throughout the nation’s southeast.
The character of this conflict — fought largely at a distance with artillery and with the perimeters separated by densely mined fields — has pressured conventional particular operators to transition from covert ways they used extra usually earlier within the battle. Now, the combating is basically finished with expertise, together with a big selection of self-detonating drones, whereas the expert troopers direct them from a secure distance — a preferable risk-to-reward ratio than sneaking behind Russian traces.
“What’s the downside with going behind enemy traces? Complete mining,” stated Oleh, the primary deputy director of the Alpha forces, who, like others on this story, requested to be recognized solely by his first title for safety causes. “It’s nearly unattainable to go someplace secretly. It’s important to use some sort of demining gear. This implies you’ll already be recognized.”
The work of the Alpha items provided a window into the early challenges in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the place restricted advances have been hard-gained because the Russians have hunkered down in defenses ready over many months. Alpha fighters are educated to do every thing from firing an antitank missile to working a cellular air-defense system. Their snipers are thought to be the most effective in Ukraine. However all have turned their focus to drones currently as their targets turned harder to achieve.
The struggles of the Alpha fighters illustrate the steep challenges the Ukrainian army now faces at each stage — even amongst its most elite and efficient items — because it runs right into a Russian drive that has ready and adjusted since its repeated missteps final fall when Ukraine recaptured giant swaths of territory within the Kharkiv and Kherson areas.
The jap entrance line, close to the besieged metropolis of Bakhmut, is much less mined than the extensive fields of the southern Zaporizhzhia area. However it’s nonetheless exhausting to get near the Russians. Not too long ago, a staff of Oleh’s fighters had “a comparatively shallow entry” into enemy turf close to there and 14 of them have been wounded, he stated.
“And with our sources, the lack of 14 folks is a large loss for us,” Oleh stated. “Sure, the enemy additionally suffers losses. However once more, are our losses acceptable in these circumstances and are they justified? I can not use these 14 folks in different operations within the close to future.”
“The issues that might be finished a yr and a half in the past or a yr in the past, which have been comparatively secure and have been finished, now we have to assess the appropriateness,” he added.
Ukraine’s major inside safety service, the SBU, created its Alpha division in 1994 with a give attention to counterterrorism operations. That work stays, however extra has been added amid conflict.
The top of the SBU, Vasyl Maliuk, not too long ago confirmed that its specialists have been accountable for attacking the Crimean Bridge final yr, a dramatic strike that briefly disrupted a key Russian provide route. The service has additionally been behind latest sea drone strikes on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, in line with a Ukrainian official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity. The official was not licensed to debate the matter publicly.
When the Russians have been attempting to seize of Kyiv, Alpha’s major process was defending the federal government and its leaders, together with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleh stated. However since final yr, he has spent most of his time in Zaporizhzhia, now overseeing Alpha items helping in the primary focus of Ukraine’s counteroffensive — a bid to sever the land hall between Russia and Crimea.
Alpha is selective: To get in, you need to cross a health check, a polygraph and a psychological examination. Efforts to widen recruiting throughout the conflict to type a separate assault unit yielded simply 80 new members, Oleh stated.
Like different particular forces, Alpha groups can generally have the identical features as common army brigades, comparable to working a howitzer. However their assignments are sometimes finished in small teams — supposed to inflict excessive enemy losses utilizing fewer sources.
The complete Alpha division has only one artillery gun, a 105mm British L119 that’s at present within the Zaporizhzhia area, utilized by a gaggle that calls itself “Tiger Woods,” as a result of its strikes are as correct because the American golfer. At a base close to the city of Orikhiv, the fighters have a satellite tv for pc picture of the Zaporizhzhia plains divided into squares. Usually the combating, they stated, is happening within the skinny tree traces that separate every discipline. That’s the place the Russians have their posts and conceal their weapons.
Due to the dense community of mines, the Ukrainians are advancing, slowly, on foot. Right here, south of Orikhiv, they’ve moved greater than two miles for the reason that counteroffensive began in early June, the Alpha troopers stated.
Not too long ago, they stated, a gaggle of troopers approached a Russian trench line they thought was deserted. As they began to stroll by it, they realized the ditch was booby-trapped with mines. All 5 Ukrainians have been injured by the blasts, and the Russians, who had been hiding close by, then began capturing, killing 4 of them. One wounded soldier escaped after different Ukrainian items began firing shells on the trench. They’d watched the ambush of their comrades on a feed from a reconnaissance drone.
“Mines are in every single place, on the outskirts of the trenches,” stated Ilya, an officer in Alpha’s artillery unit. “First, it must be cleared by artillery, then assault teams will go. If the assault group encounters any resistance, it’s again to the artillery, then again to the assault teams. Very slowly. However that is our actuality.”
Quite than contending with minefields, the place Alpha has achieved biggest success is with loitering munitions, which vary in measurement and price. The three-man staff that destroyed the antenna tower focuses on targets associated to Russians’ jamming skill and communication infrastructure.
A second group working within the Zaporizhzhia area not too long ago used a RAM II self-detonating drone made in Ukraine, which appears like a small grey airplane with a propeller within the again and might fly as much as 25 miles.
The Alpha division alone this yr has broken or destroyed greater than 322 tanks and armored automobiles, 48 artillery techniques and 65 particular gear objects, together with digital warfare, stated Oleh, the deputy director.
However “now it’s harder,” stated Pasha, who heads the Alpha unit launching the RAM II drones.
Since final yr, the Russians have been utilizing a Pole-21 digital warfare system that suppresses all satellite tv for pc navigation over an space of as much as 150 sq. kilometers. Meaning “we fly by landmarks, we don’t have GPS right here in any respect,” Pasha stated. And sometimes, simply when the drone may need a goal in sight, the feed will go darkish due to the Russians’ jamming.
It’s positioned a premium on focusing on the digital warfare techniques themselves.
“We’ve got very exact means,” Pasha stated. “The army prioritizes giving us a goal to hit, and solely then, if we are able to’t hit it, they switch it to HIMARS or artillery — as a result of artillery might not hit in any respect, and HIMARS additionally has nuances. If the digital warfare is working, it could not hit the goal both.”
In preparation for the Ukrainians’ counteroffensive, the Russians concentrated extra of their digital warfare techniques within the Zaporizhzhia area, Pasha stated. It’s made him yearn for a change of surroundings.
“We preferred working within the Donetsk area higher,” Pasha instructed Oleh. “There are extra targets there. There’s extra lively work there, and there may be much less digital warfare. … This space is essentially the most fortified. And they’re merely in a dead-end protection.”
“Then let’s work right here for the final day, after which I am going to give an order, you will be transferred there,” Oleh instructed him.
“No downside,” Pasha stated. “We’d like outcomes — to destroy the enemy.”
An Alpha sniper group close to the jap metropolis Bakhmut stated the Russians are dug into their defenses there, too, making it tough to search out targets. The Russians “enter their positions within the morning and don’t depart the dugout till evening,” stated Felix, considered one of Alpha’s snipers.
His unit hasn’t had conventional sniper work since early Might, he stated, specializing in reconnaissance within the meantime.
There have been extra alternatives final yr, he stated. A yr in the past, when the western financial institution of the Kherson area was nonetheless occupied, Felix and two others from his sniper unit obtained intelligence from locals in an occupied village a couple of Russian army commander. They studied the place cows walked by the fields, marking which areas appeared to not be mine. Then at evening, the group crossed the Inhulets River by foot, quietly getting into enemy-held territory and planting MON-90 mines on the street close to his automotive earlier than retreating, he stated.
“He stood out due to his car,” Felix stated. “Since he was the boss, the automotive needed to be extra lovely and so forth.”
The group then waited for the best alternative earlier than remotely detonating the explosives. “After he was neutralized, they’d a giant panic. They have been a bit depressed,” Felix stated with amusing.
He lamented that the identical sort of mission wouldn’t be doable now as a result of the Russians have extra intensely mined every thing forward of their outposts. “It’s a bit extra of a raffle,” Felix stated.
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