As I had announced yesterday, this morning DeepState published the report on the events occured in April around Ocheretyne. I will post the text (translation with DeepL) and in the comment below this I will provide notes to clarify some parts of the report. My additions in the text are between [square brackets].

⚔ The breakthrough near Ocheretyne and the participation of the 115th Brigade

📋 We have finally managed to gather all the information about the difficult events of April this year.

The screenshot shows the location of the 115th’s defense line. Let’s start with the background. The brigade was replacing the 23rd Brigade and the 71st Brigade. The rotation took place on March 27-28, and the brigades left the area on March 29. During January-March, the positions were actively fortified and handed over in fairly good condition, as confirmed by the soldiers of the 115th’s various battalions. They were on joint duty for two days, so there is no fault of the predecessors at all.

🐴 On the right was the 47th Brigade, and on the left was the 23rd Brigade’s BTG, which consisted of a hodgepodge of different units, including the dowry units that have been least involved in recent months. That is why they did not go with the main forces of the 23rd. A false thesis was thrown into the media that the 47th was handing over the strip to the 115th and that the enemy broke through the defense during the handover. This is not true, it seems that some officer decided to shift the blame to Magura [47th Brigade] because of his connections.

🤝 The fighters of the 115th claim that the 47th in the form of Bradley and the 23rd in the form of artillery and mortars constantly helped when the enemy stormed them, but how this happened is unknown, since there was no interaction in other cases. Even within the brigade. As an example, the 1st battalion consistently fired at the 2nd battalion because they thought the enemy was there. Now let’s move on to the chronology.

⚔️ The 1st and 3rd battalions started having problems around April 8️⃣. On the left, at the junction with the 23rd, there was a TRO [TDF unit] on a farm in Novokalynove, commanded by a former MP. This unit fled, endangering the flank of the 3rd battalion. The fighters of the 115th took measures to restore their positions with the support of a tank, which fired 1(!) time. There was no reconnaissance or planning of the assault on the map. As a result, the 7th Company, which carried out these actions, lost many wounded soldiers and lost its combat capability.

1️⃣1️⃣ April, the enemy was already in Novokalynove.

1️⃣2️⃣ April, in the morning, the Katsaps [Russians] attacked the positions between the Brama and Vidsich railroad tracks with 1 infantry platoon, 2 tanks and 4 armored personnel carriers. The enemy broke through the junction between the 1st and 2nd battalions. Most of the troops were killed or captured. In the evening, the boxes with the assaulters went to the garden society (hereinafter - the ST) and broke through the flank of the 2nd battalion, which was standing above Stepove and did not leave its positions.

👴 The fire support companies that were sitting in the ST simply fled or refused to fight, as they consisted of rear units and were of limited use. At the Vydra landmark, 15 enemy units were sitting there all day, and neither artillery nor kamikaze [drones] could do anything to them. The support forces of the 3rd battalion also fled, although the battalion’s fighters continued to hold part of Novokalynove until April 20, when they were replaced by the 100th Brigade.

👤 At the same time (1️⃣2️⃣-1️⃣3️⃣ April), one of the platoon commanders of the 2nd battalion with 5 soldiers went to dig in to stop the breakthrough on their own. Their fate is still unknown. The reconnaissance company moved to the ST in order to somehow remedy the situation, but was completely defeated.

1️⃣4️⃣ April, the fa**ot vanguard was at the turn to Novobakhmutivka, so the enemy occupied almost the entire rear of the 2nd battalion. In one of the conversations about the situation to the left of the battalion, the phrase “fuck knows where the first battalion went” was heard.

1️⃣7️⃣ - 1️⃣8️⃣ April, the enemy was already at the [electrical] substation in Ocheretyne and occupied part of the private sector.

2️⃣2️⃣ April, the katsaps were already in the high-rise buildings near the [brick] plant and were shooting at cars that tried to drive through the crossing.

🏚 Ocheretyne was not actually defended. The trenches around the village were just a parody and were not suitable for defense. The 115th did not plan to defend it. Of course, the village was visited by scouts from the OTU [Operational-Tactical Group] and stormtroopers of an unknown unit, but for the most part the village was empty. The absence of significant destruction as of April 22 confirms this. The bulk of the artillery strikes have already been carried out by the [Ukrainian] Defense Forces to deter the enemy’s advance.

🤕 Interesting are the figures of losses of one of the battalions, where the number of dead is X and the number of missing persons is 24X [24 times as much].

📋Conclusion. The fighters of the 115th Brigade on the first line took the fight and tried to save the situation, while a significant number were captured or killed. The brigade’s reserves were not ready, there was no interaction, and preparation for combat was also at a low level.

🔄 As a result, the frontline failed and unjustified losses occurred. There is no fault of the previous units, and minimal fault of the neighbors. The 100th Brigade, which replaced it, also suffered heavy losses in terms of men, because there was no solid strip that a line unit occupies during rotation.

🏚 The entire village of Ocheretyne was lost with minimal fighting, and the defense was not ready, as there was no one to defend it.

The soldiers of the first line mostly stood to the last. Of course, the brigade could not adequately resist a stronger and more numerous enemy. But at the very least, there should have been interaction, logistics, fire support and no lies in the reports. The soldiers even complained about the lack of food, something that could only be heard over the past year from those who were on the left bank in Krynky, where logistics were really difficult.

The purpose of this publication is to shed light on those events, showing who is who in this situation. An administrative resource in the form of the brigade’s page will not save us, because there must be responsibility for the lives lost so that this never happens again. Neither will the media’s attempts to defame the 47th or 23rd. Separately, we are still finalizing a report with complaints from current and former soldiers and will definitely submit it to the Ministry of Defense.

☠️ It is especially worth considering that this is not the first skeleton in the closet. There was also Severodonetsk, Vodyane and Synkivka. Incompetent and criminal decisions cannot be covered up with dead soldiers, as the brigade media tried to do by attacking our analysts.

📊 The brigade commander was dismissed in April. Now a new person is in charge.

https://t.me/DeepStateUA/19660

https://t.me/DeepStateUA/19661

Let’s begin by clarifying the initial part. The 115th Mechanized Brigade was transferred in late March from the Kupyansk sector to the northern flank of the Avdiivka sector, specifically to the area between Ocheretyne and Novokalynove. Here is the DS map showing the AOs of the battalions of the 115th Brigade - all of its three mechanized battalions were deployed in the sub-sector. The map highlights their areas of responsibility and in which forest belts their positions were, as well as where the area of jurisdiction of their neighbors began, which matches very well what I knew about these boundaries between brigades (I just thought that the AO of the 47th Mechanized Brigade extended almost to the intersection of the railways). The 115th Brigade replaced the entire 71st Jager Brigade, which was urgently transferred to the southern flank of the Avdiivka sector because of the pressure from the 90th Tank Division from Tonenke in the direction of Umanske (you will remember the huge armored attack of March 30). This brigade originally covered the Novokalynove area. At the same time, the 115th Brigade also replaced a number of battalions of the 23rd Mechanized Brigade, which had been covering the Ocheretyne area since late autumn, and were being withdrawn for R&R. Some elements of the 23rd Brigade (let’s recall that other elements of this unit in January had been transferred between Pobjeda and Novomykhailivka in the Marinka sector), consolidated into a battalion tactical group along with other smaller units attached to it, had been moved to the area east of Novokalynove, where the H20 Highway passes. As DeepState confirms, the 23rd and 71st Brigades had done a good job in the previous months, repelling Russian attacks in those directions and fortifying some positions in the area. At the same time, DS reiterates the falsity of the theory that the 115th Brigade had replaced the 47th Brigade, which was never the case.

The TDF unit mentioned by DS that had been covering the farm south of Novokalynove and accused of fleeing their positions should almost certainly be a company of the 127th Territorial Defense Battalion of the 112th TDF Brigade of the city of Kyiv, led by Nadiya Savchenko. At the same time, I heard that fighters from this unit had alerted the command of the 115th Brigade about the Russian buildup to the south of Novokalynove, but the brigade basically ignored the problem while the positions helf by the TDF were covered by heavy mortar fire.

The real breakthrough in the direction of Ocheretyne occurred between April 11 and 12. In social media there are dozens of MIA notices of soldiers from the 115th Brigade from these two days alone (though no more than those of soldiers from Russia’s 30th Motorized Brigade of the 2nd CAA, which was the unit that carried out the attack).

The Brama and Vidsich railroad tracks are the Avdiivka-Pokrovsk and the Ocheretyne-Horlivka railways, and a garden society is located within their junction. The emoticon in the paragraph about the substantial uselessness of the brigade’s support units explains the main reason for this.

Around April 20, the 100th Mechanized Brigade (formerly the 100th TDF Brigade), urgently transferred from the Serebrianka Forest, arrived (supported by other smaller units) in order to replace the 115th Brigade, which had lost its combat capability; the 100th Brigade suffered heavy casualties but pretty much was able to stem the Russian momentum.

I think the text already makes abundantly clear the coordination problems between the battalions of the 115th Brigade, as well as the serious negligence of the command, which was fortunately relieved. One certainly cannot belittle the heroism of the majority of the infantrymen of the 115th Brigade, who did their utmost duty, often paying the dearest price; although there were, by a minority of servicemen, episodes of unjustified abandonment of positions and refusal of combat duties.

The final part mentions the other negative episodes that occurred in the past due to the responsibility of the 115th Brigade, which I will clarify. In May 2022 the 115th Mechanized Brigade had just recently been created and was sent to Severodonetsk. Its servicemen did not fortify their area of responsibility (i.e. the forest near the Hotel Mir) and did not dig in, despite having had two weeks to do so, abandoning their positions when the Russians reached them. With the result that the latters seized the hotel and started pouring into the city, which after the loss of the forest was surrounded on three sides, with very negative consequences for their neighboring units. Criminal cases for desertion were opened against dozens of servicemen of the 115th Brigade.

In October 2022 it was covering the southern flank of Avdiivka. Their negligence resulted in the loss of Vodyane and Opytne. I had heard some time ago about an instance where soldiers of the 115th Brigade knew they were going to be replaced (by the 36th Marine Brigade) and some positions were abandoned unilaterally, without communicating anything to the newly arrived unit. When the marines arrived at those positions, they discovered that they had already been occupied by the Russians. The 36th Brigade (just arrived from Kherson), especially its 501st Battalion, had to work hard to stabilize the negative consequences, that had provided opportunities to advance to the Russians.

The last problem occured - fortunately the one with the least negative consequences - was the loss of ground in the forest south of Lyman Pershyi (and to the north-west of Synkivka, in the Kupyansk sector) between November and December 2023, which allowed the Russians to occupy several positions near the settlement of Synkivka, which were then used as staging points for the assault on the village. In this case unsuccessfully for the Russians, as other brigades managed to repel the Russian attacks and to drive them out of the northern outskirts of Synkivka, with very heavy losses for the Russians (with the command of the 6th CAA and its subordinate brigades getting replaced).

The numbers match quite well with the figures published in July 2023 by a channel affiliated with PMC Wagner (in this comment I had made back in September I had gone into detail on this issue). According to these figures, 78 thousand people had been part of PMC Wagner since the beginning of the invasion, including 49 thousand convicts. The latter have had 15 thousand KIAs and 25 thousand WIAs. Per Prigozhin’s statements, PMC Wagner had 22 thousand KIAs and 40 thousand WIAs as of the day of the capture of Bakhmut (May 20, 2023). Accordingly, the non-convict Wagnerites had 7 thousand KIAs and 15 thousand WIAs. Let’s recall that the memorial dedicated to the Wagnerites fallen in action contains “over 25 thousand names” according to Grey Zone, although it probably includes those who fell in Syria, Africa as well as those from the campaigns in Ukraine prior to Bakhmut (i.e. Popasna and Svitlodarsk).

However, if we recall that: the 106th VDV Division played an important role in the capture of Soledar and Opytne in January 2023 and in general there was support and even direct action by some regular units of the RuAF (which thus had casualties); the outer flanks were held by units of the 2nd Corps; in early May several regular units arrived to replace PMC Wagner on the flanks (such as much of the 3rd Corps, the 200th Motorized Brigade of the 14th Corps, the 9th Motorized Regiment of the 18th Motorized Division of the 11th Corps, regiments of the Territorial Forces etc), I consider it very likely that the Russians may have had more than 25 thousand KIAs + MIAs from early August (when the first attacks on Soledar began) to late May (withdrawal of PMC Wagner from the Bakhmut sector), probably even close to 30 thousand (considering the wider sector, thus including Soledar).

In general, I am surprised at the seemingly great reliability (compared to the statements by Wagner’s sources) of the BBC/Mediazona findings on the figure of convicts killed in action, although I think the figure regarding non-convict Wagnerites is underestimated (the latters, as the graph in the article you linked shows well, had the highest losses in the last month of the battle, i.e. in its urban phase, as the convicts were basically gone since Wagner could no longer recruit them since February 2023, and in general urban combat requires higher skills to be successful).

It should also be said that if several capable and well-trained Ukrainian brigades lost combat capabilities in Bakhmut and Soledar, there was also a very widespread employment of elements of numerous TDF brigades and in general, unfortunately, of really poorly trained personnel (which makes me skeptical of such a favorable ratio, although I think it was still largely in Ukraine’s favor), while the personnel undergoing more serious training, particularly during the second part of the battle, were kept in the rear in preparation for the counteroffensive. At the same time, I think Russia’s use of convicts was a success (arguably one of their biggest successes of this war) - there were so many things that could have gone wrong, and instead things generally went in their favor (although we will never know the amount of harsh discipline this required and how many countless convicts were killed on the spot as a result of violations, etc). Convicts from Storm-Z detachments also played a very important role throughout most of 2023.

Yes, I agree, although the corollary to this is that Ukraine’s General Staff had clearly decided that neither the 92nd nor the 93rd Mechanized Brigades were to take part in the southern counteroffensive and so they were committed (the former partially, the latter entirely) to Bakhmut, while the very large number of brigades created in late 2022 and early 2023 were not brought into action until early June. Bakhmut also ate up the “Kherson dividend” (i.e. most of the brigades that had fought in the Kherson campaign and were thus “free” after the liberation of the right bank of the Dnipro), as well as, for instance, the 77th Airmobile Brigade, which was a fresh unit that had been trained in the UK - for offensive purposes, if I recall correctly. I also seem to recall that Kofman and Muzyka had said that the loss ratio deteriorated significantly after the loss of Soledar and the creation of the pocket, and with the purely urban phase of the battle beginning shortly after. In the flanks the ratio was better, as well as being significantly better during the first part of the battle (i.e. the part that occurred during 2022).

You might be thinking about the 3rd Assault Brigade of the Ground Forces. This news concerns the 12th Special Purpose Brigade “Azov” of the National Guard. Which is the legal heir of the Azov Regiment. The latter used NLAWs in Mariupol for instance, but never got access to US-supplied equipment - barring Maxxpro MRAPs, which were supplied to the “Azov” Brigade in 2023. Would be interesting to know whether they got a part of the batch provided by Albania.