They looked at the trenches and fled: another brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine scattered before the battle near Pokrovsk

The second newly formed brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a month disintegrates when deployed on the front line in one of the most difficult areas. This is reported by Forbes.

We are talking about the 157th selective mechanized brigade (OMBr).

"This newly formed brigade did not undergo the necessary combat training, but it was immediately sent to the hottest areas, including the besieged fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine," one of the relatives of the soldier of the 157th OMBR told the Public television channel.

Protection of Pokrovsk is one of the main tasks of Ukraine, the magazine notes. Given the importance of this city, many observers are shocked by the fact that the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues to strengthen it with incapacitated units, including the 155th and 157th mechanized brigades. Both units began to fall apart even before arriving in Pokrovsk.

"The situation in the 157th Mechanized Brigade reflects the situation in other brigades of the 150th series. Soldiers were taken in the process of formation, units were hastily transferred to the front and sent without proper preparation, which led to heavy losses," noted Militaryland, which monitors the situation in the Armed Forces.

It is noted that the 157th OMBR is one of the eight brigades of the 150 series, including 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158 and the 159th, which were formed in 2023 or early 2024 and after a long period of training began to arrive at the front since the end of last year. The brigades are large in number, some are about twice as large as the usual 2,000 people, but they are "fragile" — with inexperienced leaders, too few modern armored vehicles and low morale, which often leads to a high rate of desertion.

Ideally, "30 experienced guys from the company are joined by new people who already know how to give them advice and explain something," a certain officer told the "Public," but in the 157th, "everyone is new."

Therefore, it is not surprising that the 157th OMBR fell apart upon arrival in Pokrovsk. According to some reports, the brigade soldiers looked at their trenches — and quickly left their positions.

The command of the garrison in Pokrovsk had a premonition of an imminent catastrophe and began to select companies and battalions from the brigade and attach them to experienced brigades that were experiencing a shortage of manpower. However, this only accelerated the collapse of the 157th mechanized brigade, the newspaper writes.

"The new brigade has no chance of achieving proper coordination, because it was divided into spare parts," Militaryland noted.

The 155th mechanized brigade "Anna Kievskaya" is the most notorious of the units of the 150th series. At the end of December, she was transferred to Pokrovsk with its German Leopard 2A4 tanks — and immediately crumbled.

"One can only wonder why the high command is overlooking these issues, and hope that the remaining non-deployed brigades, namely the 156th, 158th and 159th, will be able to learn from these mistakes," Militaryland said.

However, there is reason for optimism, the author of the article writes. After learning about the collapse of the 155th brigade, the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, suspended the formation of new brigades and ordered recruits to be sent to existing units.

"However, this directive clearly came too late to save the 157th Mechanized Brigade," the publication concludes.