Ukrainian Marines Busted a Russian Bunker in a Risky Assault Across Mud—And in a Mud-Optimized Vehicle
The BVS-10 is lightweight and vulnerable to enemy fire
Ukraine’s 38th Marine Brigade redefined courage—if not recklessness—back in March when it sent an assault team on a mission to demolish a Russian bunker outside Mykolaivka, just six miles east of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
What’s most remarkable is that the marines, from the brigade’s 1st Battalion, attacked the bunker in a thinly armored BVS-10, a marshland transport with wide tracks and low ground pressure that, if you count its passenger trailer, weighs no more than 10 tons. That’s less than even a thinly protected Russian MT-LB armored tractor.
It’s obvious why the marines attacked in a BVS-10, however. The ground is visibly muddy in the archival video of the assault the 38th Marine Brigade finally posted online in recent days. The BVS-10 is uniquely suited for operations on snow, sand and mud.
It worked. With the BVS-10’s top gunner laying down suppressive five, the marines bounded toward the bunker, tossed in their explosives and bounded back, leaping into the BVS-10 with just a few minor injuries to remind them how dangerous it is to operate in broad daylight along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine. It’s especially dangerous under light armor.
Ukraine has gotten around 200 BVS-10s and similar BV-206s as donations from Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It also got a few PC-065Bs—BVS-10-style vehicle optimized for cargo duty—from Japan.
The low-pressure vehicles appear to spend more of their time on logistics duty behind the front line.
Workhorses
It’s a traditional strength for the type. During the British military’s 1982 campaign to liberate the Falklands from Argentinian forces, the Royal Marines landed a few BV-202s—predecessors of the BV-206s—and relied on them to maintain the supply line between advancing infantry and their beachhead, nearly 60 miles away.
“Their tracked BV-202s performed superbly on the terrain and could handle the marshy off-road trek across the island,” California think-tank RAND explained. “Those units without the BV-202s, such as the [British Army’s] Welsh Guards, advanced much more slowly.”
True to that tradition, Ukrainian BVS-10s have been spotted in the ambulance role with the new 40th Coastal Defense Brigade, a marine corps unit that defends the marshy right bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast.
Meanwhile, a Japanese-made PC-065B made its first appearance near, but not at, the front line in Ukraine in an April video. With their excellent mobility across loose and sticky ground, capacious cargo beds and compact cranes, the PC-065Bs can help engineers build the bunkers and other fortifications that help outnumbered Ukrainian infantry survive Russian bombardment.
But British troops learned the hard way that the BV-type vehicles are vulnerable to enemy fire. If you’re going to send them into direct action or travel in them along highly contested supply routes, be prepared to lose them.
The Brits deployed BVS-10s to Afghanistan around 2006 and quickly discovered the limits of the vehicles’ design. “Several ... were destroyed by large [improvised explosive devices], creating a crisis of confidence in the vehicle,” consultant Nicholas Drummond and his coauthor Jed Cawthorne explained.
The Ukrainians have lost dozens of BV-type vehicles but don’t appear to be suffering a crisis of confidence—not if the recent BVS-10 assault is any indication.
That may have something to do with the persistent shortage of infantry vehicles in the Ukrainian inventory. It may also mean the Ukrainians understand that fighting across mud may mean accepting the elevated risk from the necessary lightness of mud-optimized vehicles.
Read more:
It Has Cost Russia Exactly One Armored Truck to Capture 60 Square Miles of Ukraine's Sumy Oblast
Parts of no fewer than 18 Russian regiments and brigades, each with 2,000 or more troops, have marched into northern Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast. And by “marched,” I mean literally marched.