A minor counterattack by the Russian army’s 39th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade—south of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region—ended in defeat for the 39th Brigade on or around Tuesday.
The half-hearted attack itself isn’t terribly remarkable. Not while the Ukrainian armed forces still are pressing their counteroffensive across much of southern Ukraine, and while a half-dozen Russian regiments and brigades are attacking around Avdiivka, north of Donetsk.
The Ukrainian general staff mentioned the abortive attack only in passing in its daily update on Wednesday.
What is remarkable is the equipment the brigade left behind, along with at least one dead body, after the assault collapsed. The brigade had created some, ahem, unique fighting vehicles based on MT-LB armored tractors—and lost at least two of them attacking toward Novomykhailivka.
The 39th Brigade’s do-it-yourself fighting vehicle is a 1970s-vintage, 13-ton MT-LB armored tractor with an add-on 23-millimeter cannon and a new open compartment for the 11 crew and passengers. The MT-LB is a popular vehicle for improvisation, mostly owing to the sheer number of the tractors that the Soviet Union, and later Ukraine, manufactured through the early 2000s.
The Russian brigade is proud of its DIY vehicles. Especially the open passenger compartment, which allows a soldier to stand up and scan his surroundings while traveling. “The infantry rides behind the armor, watching the situation,” one Telegram user wrote about the MT-LB fighting vehicle. “Easier evacuation of people and loading of ammunition.”
Hedging their bets, however, the 39th Brigade’s crews apparently built removable roofs for the open compartments.
The main problems with the vehicle are the problems all MT-LB-based fighting vehicles have—both Russian and Ukrainian models. The MT-LB’s armor is paper-thin: just 14 millimeters thick at its thickest, barely enough to stop a machine-gun round.
Plus, the vehicles are old, slow and mechanically unreliable. One Ukrainian MT-LB-based fighting vehicle moves so ponderously over rough terrain that soldiers advancing on foot easily outpace it.
The 39th Brigade reportedly improved its MT-LBs’ tracks and exhausts to reduce noise. But the DIY vehicle’s purported quietness belies a separate major flaw: the open passenger compartment practically welcomes direct strikes on the embarked infantry by mortars, artillery and explosives-laden drones.
Ironically, it wasn’t top-down attacks that doomed the brigade’s MT-LB fighting vehicles on Tuesday, however. No, it was mines. At least two of the tractors struck mines and threw tracks, immobilizing them. The crews and passengers bailed out. At least one soldier died a step from his vehicle’s rear exit.
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