There’s a reason purpose-made armored vehicles tend to have metal tracks or, barring that, big fat off-road tires. A mechanized force can’t always count on undamaged paved roads to lead them to their objectives.
It’s a truism the Russian army in Ukraine has forgotten as its battered regiments increasingly make do with civilian vehicles that don’t have tracks or off-road tires. But these regiments are about to get a stark reminder as the weather warms all along the front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, and once-frozen ground turns to mud.
The Ukrainians have a name for this muddy season: bezdorizhzhya. This year’s bezdorizhzhya has already begun claiming victims in eastern Ukraine. On or just before Tuesday, Russian troops traveling in a Lada—a kind of compact car—got stuck in the mud just north of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
The Lada was a sitting duck when an explosive first-person-view drone barreled in.
Assault loafs
Other Russian assault groups traveling in bukhankas—civilian “loaf” vans—were only slightly luckier around Pokrovsk, 40 miles to the southwest, on or around the same day. While they managed to cross the still-frozen ground, their mobility didn’t save them from the ever-present drones.
The combination of mud and drones afflicts logistics troops as much as it afflicts the infantry. Russian supply trains have no choice but to stick to the main paved roads, as alternate routes are increasingly soupy as winter turns to spring. Ukrainian “road cutter” drones are squeezing these paved roads, destroying so many Russian trucks that the wreckage turns into roadblocks.
“The situation near Pokrovsk is extremely difficult—logistics are being disrupted, and there aren’t enough personnel,” one Russian blogger warned in a recent missive translated by the Estonian analyst WarTranslated. “Near Chasiv Yar, we are making slight advances, but the same problem persists: logistics are being hit, and manpower is lacking.”
The Russians should brace for both problems to get worse before they get better as the mud deepens and more infantry die while riding in civilian vehicles that are prone to get stuck—and then become easy prey for the same drones that are blowing up Russian supply trucks.
Read the full article here