Every Once In a While, the Russians Scrounge a Few Dozen Armored Vehicles—And Then Send Them to Get Droned
A recent attack in southern Ukraine squandered dozens of increasingly precious combat vehicles
Unarmored civilian vehicles—scooters, motorbikes, all-terrain vehicles, compact cars and antique trucks—account for a growing proportion, perhaps even a majority, of the vehicles Russian regiments in Ukraine count on for battlefield transportation.
But that doesn’t mean the Russians can’t occasionally muster enough armored vehicles for a mass assault. The problem, for even the best-equipped assault groups, is that Ukraine’s artillery gunner and drone operators don’t actually care that much whether their targets are riding in ATVs and Lada cars or tanks and BMP infantry fighting vehicles.
They destroy them all with equal bloodthirstiness.
A large Russian force with several hundred troops and around 40 armored vehicles attacked in broad daylight in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in southern Ukraine on or before Monday, seemingly hoping to build on recent Russian momentum in this sector. Russian attacks in mid-March culminated in the Russian capture of Stepove, just east of the swamp left behind by the Russian destruction of the Dnipro River dam in 2023.
The Monday assault failed, as depicted at top. Drones and artillery from the Ukrainian 128th Mountain Assault Brigade began bombarding the assault group when it was still miles from the front line. After two hours, the Russians had reportedly lost 29 vehicles and 140 troops.
The Ukrainian defense-in-depth is typical as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its fourth year—and it should get even deeper as Ukraine becomes more self-sufficient in artillery and drone production and Russia becomes less self-sufficient—and also runs low on vehicular transport of all types.
Deepening losses
The Russians have lost 15,000 vehicles and other heavy equipment that the Oryx intelligence collective has identified. That’s 400 a month, which is more new armored vehicles than Russian industry can build or recover from long-term storage.
Yes, the Russians can press Ladas and GAZ-69 trucks into front-line operation, but these vehicles break down or get destroyed even faster than the purpose-made combat vehicles do. The result is an accelerating de-mechanization of the Russian military that saps its potential for major offensive action.
This de-mechanization is obvious, but tell that that Russian president Vladimir Putin, who like many autocrats—including U.S. president Donald Trump—has worked hard to create a comfortable information environment around himself. One that blocks bad news, even when that bad news is urgent and actionable.
“I think Russia is acting ridiculously irrationally,” said Andrew Perpetua, an open-source intelligence analyst. “I think Putin actually thinks he is winning the war, and is pushing the army to achieve more than it is physically capable of doing.”
“And this is why Russia is pushing mechanized attacks it cannot realistically perform at this point in the war,” Perpetua added.
Read more:
The Russian Army Rolled an Armored Assault Train Into Battle in Eastern Ukraine
Desperately low on armored vehicles and under increasing pressure in eastern Ukraine, Russian commanders have grown desperate. They’ve mobilized entire battalions of motorcycle troops. They’ve sent the walking wounded into battle on crutches. And now they’ve up-armored a train and deployed it as a crude, railborne battlefield transport.