Ukrainian clandestine unit claims success against Russian forces in Bakhmut

Her forearms bulged with the effort of holding the taut leash of a drooling dog. The creature’s muffled grunts could be felt as much as heard – like the growls of a poisoned truck.

Which was fitting, as its owner’s callsign is Brabus – the name of the German company that specializes in bulking up luxury vehicles with engineering testosterone.

“Come on,” Brabus growled as he was driven back to a roadside building for our clandestine meeting with some of his special ops team.

They are part of a shadowy team of units belonging to various Ukrainian intelligence organizations. They operate in twilight landscapes in the war against the Russian occupation on and off the front lines.

Other groups run by Ukrainian intelligence include the Russian Volunteer Force and the Freedom Legion for Russia, made up of Russian citizens fighting to rid their lands of President Vladimir Putin, who are currently carrying out attacks inside Russia from Ukraine.

But Brabus and his group are completely homegrown. Former soldiers with specialist skills, they rallied around a former officer in the Ukrainian forces in the early days of last year’s invasion of Russia.

“At the beginning of the war, there was a big role for small groups that could secretly fight the Russians. Because Kiev region, Chernihiv region and Sumy region are forest areas. So, the role of small groups was important and it grew quickly”, said the head of Brabus from inside a camouflaged balaclava.

In those early days and weeks, small groups of men in pickup trucks, armed with anti-tank rockets such as NLAW and Javelins supplied by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), ambushed, cornered and shot down invading Russian columns on the main arteries coming from the north.

Brave, fast and insanely brave, they attacked Russia’s military “leviathan” – eventually, north of Kiev and Sumy, stopping the invasion in its tracks.

While they were grouped into “reconnaissance units” at the time, some were absorbed into formal army structures.

But all clung to the free, partisan style of warfare with greater risks but greater autonomy.

Those who survived – and many did not – are now often put to work on tactical tasks for strategic effect. Roughly put: killing Russian officers to take down an opponent.

Night vision

Brabus agreed to share, to some extent, the story of one such operation.

In early March, when eastern Ukraine was covered with snow on top of frozen ground, Brabus said he and his team crept through skeletal forests to a regular army outpost on the front lines south of Bakhmut.

He said intelligence signals suggested that Russian units were being exchanged. This meant that there would be more officers present than usual, and – even better – the new leadership would be naïve and prone to fatal errors.

Illustrating the story with video footage recorded at the time, he explained that his group was immediately engaged in a fierce firefight with Russian paratroopers new to this front.

“They got back from us with all guns drawn,” he said, his eyes gleaming with pleasure at the memory of the Ukrainian fire.

Two videos glow in metallic orange. Trees appear silvery black, while living creatures such as men appear as intense, moving white dots. These are video recordings of his thermal sight while Brabus was working.

The videos are silent, but all the scarier for it. Somehow it can be seen that the white figures are bent over, perhaps crouching. One can imagine these Russian soldiers scouring the darkness, looking for threats, their nerves on edge with every crunch of snow and crack of twig underfoot.

The red light from his thermal sights is fixed on one of the figures. The cross jumps with the rifle’s recoil, and the little ghost collapses to the ground. The red cross slides right, jumps again, another fold.

“On the left were the (Russian) dugouts and trenches from which they could see our positions. We eliminated, or rather I eliminated, the paratroopers on the left flank”, explains Brabus in the clinical language characteristic of military reports.

His unit’s task, however, was not to help entrenched troops fighting in the “meat grinder” of Bakhmut’s front, he said. Prey for him was the leadership of the Russian paratroopers.

“We are a diverse reconnaissance group. We did the reconnaissance, we got the information, we prepared the operation, ”he said.

“How many Russians did you kill that night?” we asked.

“Seven,” replied Brabus.

sowing chaos

He is most excited when discussing the gun that is behind him, like another huge pet, in the cafe where we meet. It’s a modified Soviet-era 12.7 heavy machine gun that a local gunsmith fitted with a bulge suppressor (silencer).

Firing from an underground hiding place with a range, he says, of two kilometers (just over a mile), this weapon is almost silent, explains Brabus.

In May, he was in a shelter overlooking a junction of trees near Bakhmut. Another video shows him aiming and turning his face away from the gun as he fires, sending high-explosive supersonic bullets thicker than a man’s thumb into groups of enemy forces.

A drone operator two kilometers from Bakhmut is watching where the bullets hit and requesting adjustments to his aim. The video captures his voice crackling over the radio, “on point, perfect.”

“With this,” explains Brabus. “I kill a lot of Russians, a lot.”

Ukraine is now advancing south of Bakhmut along a hole about four miles deep, pushing Russian forces back.

And as their counteroffensive to reclaim territory captured by Russia begins, Ukrainian forces are fighting in ever-increasing numbers along an east-west front between Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.

Since Brabus and his party were in Bakhmut, there seems to have been increasing anarchy among Russian commanders. Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prighozhin’s Wagner company, which controlled the city, arrested and beat the commander of the nearby Russian 72nd Brigade.

They released a recording of the injured man “confessing” to being drunk and opening fire on them. He was beaten and released.

He has now accused Wagner and his mercenaries, who already have a deserved reputation for murder and summary execution, of attacking these men.

It is this kind of chaos in the enemy’s ranks that Ukraine most wants, indeed needs, to see.

Brabus is happy to do his part in trying to raise it.

Source: CNN Brasil

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