A Sloppy Ukrainian Commander Paraded Their Trainees Out in the Open Just 25 Miles from Russia

A Russian missile killed six of them

The city of Shostka, in northern Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast, is just 25 miles from the border with Russia. That places it within range of every heavy deep-strike munition in the Russian inventory.

So it was foolish, if not criminal, when a Ukrainian national guard commander gathered their trainees out in the open, in broad daylight, at a shooting range in Shostka on Tuesday.

A Russian drone spotted the trainees. A Russian Iskander ballistic missile streaked down. Six trainees died and 10 were injured. (See video at top.)

The national guard brass was … unhappy. “An official investigation is underway into the tragedy,” the guard announced. “The commander of the military unit was suspended, the necessary information was transferred to law-enforcement authorities.”

But don’t expect major reforms.

What’s especially galling about the recent strike on Ukrainian trainees is that it wasn’t an isolated incident. Thirty-nine months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, leaders on both sides persist to in exposing their new recruits to devastating deep strikes.

On March 1, a Russian Orlan drone winged 80 miles behind the front line in eastern Ukraine and took up station over the Cherkas’ke, in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. There’s a training base in Cherkas’ke that’s normally staffed by the Ukrainian army’s 168th Reserve Battalion.

That day, the battalion was reportedly hosting troops transferring out of the army’s newly organized 157th Mechanized Brigade.

Critically, there was no camouflage netting. No earthworks to shelter the troops as they milled about in broad daylight. No local air defenses to swat down Russian drones. Base commanders were habitually “indifferent” to their trainees’ vulnerability, one soldier who spent some time at Cherkas’ke told Ukrainian war correspondent Yuriy Butusov.

Cued by the drone, an Iskander struck. Butusov claimed 32 soldiers died and another 100 were wounded when the 168th Reserve Battalion’s training grounds exploded.

Stupid and sloppy

The Russians are equally guilty of the same sloppiness. On Nov. 21, around a dozen Russian troops piled out of civilian vans somewhere in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.

A Ukrainian drone circled overhead, silently observing. A Ukrainian High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, positioned no farther than 57 miles away on the opposite side of the front line, lobbed a single M30/31 rocket. (See video above.)

The rocket struck within yards of the Russian trainees, peppering them and their vehicles with lethal fragments. The drone peered closer—and counted at least five dead or badly wounded trainees.

It was at least the eighth attack on Russian trainees that year. On May 1, 2024, potentially hundreds of Russian troops gathered out in the open in a field near Kuban, apparently for instruction.

The problem for the Russians was the Army Tactical Missile System: an American-made precision-guided ballistic missile that, depending on the model, ranges as far as 190 miles and scatters hundreds of grenade-size submunitions.

As the Russians milled about in broad daylight on that field outside Kuban, and a Ukrainian drone observed from high overhead, four of the two-ton ATACMS rained down.

One failed to explode. The other three popped open and scattered their lethal submunitions. Each rocket turned an area as wide as 2.5 acres into a nearly inescapable kill zone.

One of the ATACMS burst directly overhead a crowd of approximately 116 unprotected Russians. All of the Russians may have died in the rain of submunitions, according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.

That strike may have been one of the bloodiest of the wider war, but otherwise it was all too routine. Negligent commanders on both sides of the war habitually parade their trainees out in the open, practically inviting massacres.

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