There Are Fancy Ukrainian Brigades. Then There’s The 31st Mechanized.

The Ukrainian army’s 31st Mechanized Brigade on Sunday liberated the village of Rivnopil in southern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

The small victory marks the continued slow progress of Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, which kicked off on June 4 with simultaneous assaults on Russian positions along at least three major southern axes.

What’s most notable about the fight for Rivnopil, a tiny cluster of homes two miles south of the former front line, is who liberated the town … and how.

The 31st Mechanized Brigade isn’t one of the nine new brigades the Kyiv’s foreign allies equipped and trained to a rough approximation of NATO standards. Instead, it’s one of the brigades the Ukrainian army recently formed on its own, with mostly ex-Soviet equipment.

But the 2,000-person brigade’s inexperience, and its mix of mostly older weaponry, didn’t prevent it from seemingly executing a smart maneuver on the fields around Rivnopil last week.

Riding in Soviet-style T-64BV tanks and American-made MaxxPro armored trucks, the brigade advanced around Rivnopil, signaling to the Russian garrison in the village—possibly from the 394th Motor Rifle Regiment—that they were about to get surrounded and cut off.

Despite holding the high ground, the Russians retreated—and the 31st Mechanized Brigade’s 2nd Mechanized Battalion entered Rivnopil. The brigade posted a video announcing the village’s liberation. “The orcs are running,” one soldier said. “And we are moving forward.”

The 31st Mechanized Brigade’s win in Rivnopil makes a mockery of Russian propaganda. On the first full day of the counteroffensive, Russian state media claimed the 31st and a partner mechanized brigade, the 23rd, suffered such extreme losses northeast of Rivnopil that Kyiv dissolved the units and combined their survivors into a single new fighting formation.

That combined formation then attempted a second assault and “was stopped by missile, artillery and heavy rocket-propelled flamethrower strikes,” Russia Today claimed.

It should go without saying that the Russians were either mistaken or, more likely, lying. The 31st Mechanized Brigade is intact, and advancing.

Moreover, the brigade’s apparent maneuver around Rivnopil could hint at the Ukrainian counteroffensive corps’ strategy for advancing along the major axis running north to south along the Mokri Yaly River, four miles to the east.

A powerful grouping of Ukrainian forces—including the 35th Marine Brigade, the 25th Air Assault Brigade and the battle-hardened 93rd Mechanized Brigade—in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive quickly liberated several villages at the bottom of the Mokri Yaly river valley.

But the brigades halted in the town of Makarivka, which sits at the base of a slope leading to nearby Urozhaine. The Russian army’s 60th and 136th Motor Rifle Brigades hold the high ground in Urozhaine and the nearby town of Staromaiors’ke.

It’s obvious the Ukrainians are worried about making a direct assault on Urozhaine. It’s equally obvious they’d prefer to flank the town, cut off the 60th and 136th Brigades and make them choose between retreating and starving.

That’s the same move the 31st Mechanized Brigade apparently made around Rivnopil. And as it happens, the 31st’s troops in Rivnopil themselves are in a position to pivot east, travel along the one narrow road connecting Rivnopil to Staromaiors’ke, and turn the Russians’ flank.

It’s evident the Ukrainians already are trying. A force of Ukrainian armored trucks and tanks probed the Rivnopil-Staromaiors’ke road on June 21 but retreated when it ran into a Russian tank. Drones from the 35th Marine Brigade meanwhile have been hunting Russian forces along the same road.

Watch this sector. It’s a likely locus of the next phase of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.