Most military bloggers are angry with the unit commanders who lost most of their soldiers. Russian Telegram channels confirm these claims - units of the 155th Brigade and the 40th Marine Infantry Brigade and Tatar volunteers took part in the attempted attack on Vuledar, which ended with heavy losses for the Russian side, to the point that in later stages of the attack, they were no longer used by armored vehicles. One of the captured soldiers was a medic before being transferred to a tank unit. Most of the tanks that were sent into the attack had crews that became tankmen practically overnight. Russian losses were further aggravated by the lack of experienced and well-trained soldiers. "We studied the routes they used, then we hid and waited," a Ukrainian army sergeant explained to the NYT. Footage released by the Ukrainian military shows the end of one of the ambushes, where a dozen tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed in a short period of time. Artillery attacks then targeted stationary tanks and crews that would emerge from their disabled vehicles. The inexperienced and poorly trained Russian crews panicked and ran off the road, where they ran into mines. Infantry units with anti-tank missiles would wait in ambush until enemy tanks came into range and then attack. Ukrainian forces had camouflaged tanks in the forest not far from the access roads that were not mined and would mine the fields around the roads.
As the NYT writes, Ukrainian forces have carefully prepared ambush sites along the approach to Vuledar, a town of particular strategic importance due to its height, which allows artillery stationed nearby to directly threaten the roads connected to the main roads in Donbass. As modern military doctrines moved away from large tank units advancing in formation, direct engagements between tanks became relatively rare, but apart from Vuledar, there were smaller engagements between mixed units on both sides that mutual contact between enemy tanks was practically daily. The battle for Vuledar itself lasted more than three weeks and involved numerous armored units on both sides.
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