Ukraine using drones to plug manpower gaps – CNN

Shortages of troops on the Pokrovsk front are reportedly approaching a critical level

Ukrainian troops are stretched so thin along the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk People’s Republic, that they fear a major Russian breakthrough in the coming days and weeks, CNN has reported.

Pokrovsk (also known as Krasnoarmeysk) is the last major population center under Ukrainian control in the west of DPR. It has gone from a major supply hub for the frontline forts to being on the front line itself.

“I cannot say exactly how much time we have, if there is any time at all,” CNN quoted a Ukrainian soldier with the callsign ‘Koshey’ as saying, in an article published on Thursday. “Now they are pushing their troops to the frontline as much as possible. And then at one point they will all go for an assault. They can go very far. In one day, let’s say.”

“The enemy is advancing because there are no people defending on the ground,” the soldier added.

Soldiers and officers interviewed by CNN spoke of acute manpower shortages, which have forced them to rely on drones to try and fend off Russian attacks.

“I have no people. I’m f***ing alone. I’m f***ing tired,” said ‘Kotya’, a Ukrainian scout sniper. “Guys are dying here. This is garbage.”

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The commander of a drone unit, callsign ‘Vostok’, said he was deployed to Pokrovsk in August and has not had any opportunity to rest or refit since. The Russians “are constantly staffed, constantly trained, they are rotated out and reinforced. We constantly hear about it from intercepts,” he said.

In recent months, Kiev has deployed press gangs across the country to round up tens of thousands of new troops. Amid reports that the US has pushed Ukraine to mobilize men as young as 18-25, one recruitment officer described his job as dealing with “cornered rats.”

One commander on the Pokrovsk front, who was not named, told CNN that only about 60 soldiers defended the key town of Selidovo when Russian forces took it last month. Another said that Selidovo had been reinforced by 300 recent recruits who lacked even basic training, but it was unclear what became of them.

Another commander told the US outlet that troops on the Pokrovsk front have been told to shoot unidentified persons on sight, fearful of Russian patrols infiltrating the sparsely held line.

While the Russian Defense Ministry has not made any announcements about this part of the front lately, open-source reports suggest that Russian forces have advanced further south of Pokrovsk, while rapidly closing the pocket further south around Kurakhovo and rolling up to Velika Novoselka, in the direction of Zaporozhye city. Further advances have been reported in Chasov Yar and Torskoe (Dzerzhinsk) on the central part of the Donetsk front.