Key takeaways
- Russian motorcycle troops repeatedly hit the same mine trap despite visible wreckage from previous incidents
- Ukrainian defenders use tactics from “The Russian Way of War” more effectively than Russian forces
- Chasiv Yar bridge became a killing ground for Russian armored vehicles in April 2024
- Russian commanders struggle to adapt routes even when facing obvious chokepoints
The Russian motorcycle trooper was enjoying good fortune, it seemed. Riding fast along a well-traveled track threading across the no-man’s-land somewhere along the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the bike soldier maneuvered toward a gap in a deep anti-tank trench the Ukrainians had prepared for just this scenario.
The flat gap, a kind of earthen bridge, was a veritable door for attacking Russian vehicles. Apparently.
It was, in fact, a trap. And not the first one Ukrainian troops have sprung along the Russians’ preferred routes as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 43rd month.
Incredibly, the Russian wasn’t deterred by the nearby hulks of numerous destroyed armored vehicles. It’s possible one alternative—trying to jump the trench—scared him more than the prospect of motoring across a possible kill zone.
The tactical failures reveal a broader pattern intelligence analysts are tracking: Russian forces’ inability to adapt even basic procedures despite mounting evidence of Ukrainian countermeasures.
Recall what happened when, back in May, a different Russian bike soldier raced in broad daylight across the no-man’s-land, miraculously avoiding mines, artillery, and drones.
That biker’s luck held until he neared a long Ukrainian anti-tank trench—one without a convenient crossing. Apparently confident in his bike-handling, the rider accelerated up the loose dirt piled up on the edge of the trench, clearly aiming to jump.
He fell short—and died, or was badly injured, in the resulting crash at the bottom of the trench.
Apparently preferring to cross a trench rather than jump it, the Russian motorcyclist in the more recent incident rode right into the Ukrainians’ trap. As a Ukrainian drone observed, the trooper sped over a mine—and exploded in a towering fireball.
Incredibly, the Russian survived—at least for a little while. He could be seen moving amid the wreckage of his wrecked motorcycle.
Ukrainian war correspondent Yuri Butusov was bemused but not surprised. “Russian banzai suicide bombers race across the field straight into a mine with a natural result,” he wrote.
“It is clear that they were far from the first at this location. But the Russian commanders do not care about the endless conveyor belt of the dead and maimed.”
Butusov’s cynicism is justified. This kind of thing has happened before.
Chasiv Yar bridge became chokepoint for Russian armored columns
In April 2024, the Ukrainian troops defending Chasiv Yar—a now-ruined town in the no-man’s-land in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast—set a similar trap for the Russian mechanized forces pushing west across Donetsk.
The trap straddled a bottleneck for Russian forces rolling out from their forward base in occupied Ivanivske. That bottleneck is a small bridge on the T-0504 road that threads west out of Ivanivske and through a forest into Chasiv Yar’s southern districts.
If the Russians—possibly from the 11th Air Assault Brigade then operating from the ruins of Bakhmut, a few miles to the east—could get over the bridge, they would’ve been able to disappear into the woods and creep toward Chasiv Yar with some degree of concealment from drones and artillery and protection from mines.
And they eventually did cross the bridge—but only after suffering shockingly heavy casualties. Local Ukrainian forces—from the 42nd and 67th Mechanized Brigades and adjacent units—concentrated enough firepower on the bridge to temporarily block Russian assaults on southern Chasiv Yar before they reached the protection of the trees.
They knocked out vehicle after vehicle until the road was littered with scorched metal, in one instance creating a “traffic jam” of destroyed equipment.
Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight anticipated the Russians’ struggle crossing that bridge.
“The road connecting Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut has several bridges over the water channel,” the group explained. “With the right approach and correctly allocated resources, Chasiv Yar could potentially be a very formidable obstacle to advancing Russian troops.”
It was especially formidable given Russian commanders’ inability to adapt quickly—and find a safer route for their beleaguered troops.
That stubbornness is still evident a year and a half later as Russians continue riding to their injury or death on that one deadly trench crossing.
Ukrainians outsmart Russians using their own doctrine
What’s especially shocking is that the Ukrainian tactic on display on that vehicle-eating crossing is that it’s straight out of the Russians’ standard battlefield doctrine.
According to the definitive The Russian Way of War, Russian regiments construct fortifications to “protect the forward edge of the defense and canalize the enemy into fire sacs within the defense.”
This strategy, repeatedly used by Ukraine, funnels enemies into kill zones where they are destroyed with concentrated firepower.
The fire in the fire sac could be tank fire, artillery, anti-tank missiles or—as was the case for that unfortunate biker—mines.
