Ukrainian Azov Brigade Returns to Frontline to Support Faltering Offensive

Ukrainian soldiers in training on 11 August. Photo: Anadolu/Anadolu

For the first time, Ukraine sent the restored Azov brigade into battle. since defending Mariupol last year as it searches for a breakthrough in its intermittent offensive.

The push came when Vladimir Putin visited the command center of his invading armies for the first time since March and a new estimate is that Russia has suffered 300,000 losses.

After announcing the deployment of the expanded Azov Brigade, the Ukrainian command said that its most famous unit had already retreated, fighting Russian troops on the front line.

“ The legendary special forces brigade «Azov» recovered and began to carry out combat missions,» said Colonel Nikolai Urshalovich.

Russian troops counterattacked in an area called Serebryansky Les on the northern section of the eastern front line near Kupyansk and Liman.

Vladimir Zelensky welcomes Azovstal defense commanders last month Photo: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

Ukraine launched a counter-offensive two months ago but suffered heavy casualties in attacks on stronger-than-expected Russian defenses.

U.S. intelligence officials said this week that Ukraine would fail in a counter-offensive to recapture Mariupol, although the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said that was an unfair and “premature” assessment because it said Russian forces were severely degraded.< /p>

«The Ukrainian counter-offensive is not a discrete set of planned operations, and ongoing counter-offensives are likely to create more favorable conditions for larger meaningful operations,» the message reads.

«Azov». A brigade in action in the Sebryansky Forest

Mariupol is important because the Kremlin wanted to turn it into a showcase city of how life under Russian rule can be beautiful and prosperous.

He bombed the city to the ground in March, April and May of last year, but since then he has spent great efforts to restore it.

Mariupol was also the site of the Azov Brigade's stubborn resistance to the Russian military last year. The Azov Brigade held off Russian soldiers for weeks at their base at the Azovstal steel plant before surrendering in May 2022.

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The Kremlin hates the Azov Brigade, which it accuses of having links with the Nazis, and was furious last month when Turkey broke a prisoner exchange deal and released its leaders before the end of the war.

Azov commanders have since incited the Kremlin with promises to get their soldiers back into the fight, which Ukraine's interior ministry has now confirmed by releasing a rock music video of them in action.

«Brigade commander Denis «Redis» Prokopenko has already in the ranks,” the message says.

Although pro-Kremlin military bloggers have acknowledged that Ukrainian troops have advanced around the village of Robotino along the southern front line.

Most of the Ukrainian brigades equipped and trained on West, now also entered the fray, including one armed with the British Army's Challenger 2 tanks.

Wounded Ukrainian soldier Mikhail Dianov at the Azovstal steel plant in eastern Mariupol in May last year. Photo: DMYTRO 'OREST' KOZATSKYI/AFP

On Friday morning, the Kremlin released a short video of Putin's first visit to his military headquarters in Rostov since March.

The rare visit comes two months after Wagner mercenaries, who demanded the resignation of General Valery Gerasimov as head of the Russian armed forces, seized the headquarters during their short-lived mutiny.

General Gerasimov was shown on the Kremlin video. Mr. Putin's greeting after he pulled up to the headquarters in his chauffeured car in the dark. Then he led Putin into a room where other generals were waiting for him.

“The head of state listened to the reports of the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, commanders of operations and other senior officers of the group,” the Kremlin said.

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While analysts say Putin is micromanaging elements of Russia's strategy in Ukraine, he rarely visits front lines. In April, a video showed Putin visiting units on the southern front line in the occupied Kherson region.

The war in Ukraine has become the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. US intelligence officials told the New York Times that Russia lost 300,000 soldiers in the 18-month war, including 120,000 killed. They also said that Ukraine lost 200,000 people.