In mid-October, Ukrainian troops turned a short stretch of asphalt in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast into a “road of death,” according to Anton Gerashchenko, a former advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.
Six weeks later, they’ve done it again.
A video posted by the Ukrainian 225th Assault Battalion on Friday depicts at least 10 newly destroyed vehicles alongside older wrecks. The road past Zelenyi Shlyakh “has become a trap for Russian forces,” the 225th Assault Battalion announced. “The fields are mined, the road is targeted by our artillery and every movement is carefully monitored.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has given his forces until February to eject Ukrainian forces from the 250-square-mile salient they’ve occupied in Kursk since early August.
But Russian vehicles from a quartet of marine and airborne brigades and regiments keep attacking along the same road near Zelenyi Shlyakh, a tiny hamlet on the western edge of the salient. And the Ukrainians keep knocking them out with mines, drones and artillery.
The mix of fresh kills tells a story. Russian assaults in October largely involved BTR-82 infantry fighting vehicles from a batch of at least 40 of the 16-ton, eight-wheeled vehicles the Kremlin had just delivered to the front line.
The BTR-82s appear to be running out. Judging from the smoking wreckage along the Zelenyi Shlyakh road, recent assaults have included BMP and BMD tracked fighting vehicles, MT-LB armored tractors and Buran armored trucks.
But the BMPs, BMDs and MT-LBs may not last, either—and the Russians might have to ride into battle in whatever vehicles Russian industry can deliver quickly. “I think we will see a lot of new vehicles during the future assaults,” predicted Kriegsforscher, a Ukrainian marine corps drone operator who has been defending the roads on the Kursk salient’s western edge.
Kriegsforscher anticipated the new vehicles would include at least two types of armored truck: the 14-ton Typhoon-VDV and the eight-ton Tigr.
Both truck models are comparatively easy to build, but neither can match a 21-ton BMP-3 in terms of armor protection and cross-country mobility. With no choice but to roll down the asphalt past Zelenyi Shlyakh—and to do so without the benefit of heavy armor—the trucks could be even more vulnerable than the wheeled and tracked fighting vehicles that preceded them.
The outnumbered Ukrainian troops in Kursk are counting on it. “We fully exploit their vulnerabilities,” the 225th Assault Battalion explained.
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