In its struggle to make up for the loss of thousands of armored cars, the Russian military has long relied on unarmored cars — motorcycles, ATVs, vans, and trucks — to send infantry into battle.
But the attack by vans and sedans outside the walled city of Pokrovsk this week would probably have marked a turning point. This was probably one of the first significant Russian attacks in which all cars were civilian models.
It’s an ominous development for Russia. But not necessarily a decisive one.
As a Ukrainian drone observed from on high, a platoon- or company-sized Russian force assembled outside Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, climbed into at least seven trucks and cars and rolled toward Ukrainian positions. One of the vehicles flew an old Soviet flag.
The outcome should shock no one. Russia’s best armored vehicles are vulnerable on the shell-pocked, mine-infested, drone-patrolled landscape outside Pokrovsk. Its worst unarmored vehicles are even more vulnerable.
“The attack was effectively repulsed,” Officer, a popular Ukrainian military blogger, reported Saturday. “The car with the rag” – the Soviet flag – “the subject of special attention. “
The capture of Pokrovsk is a prime objective for the Russians as their broader war against Ukraine approaches its fourth year. A massive Russian force has been heading toward Pokrovsk since it drove the ammunition-starved Ukrainian garrison out of the town of Avdiivka, 60 kilometers to the east, last February.
The Ukrainian garrison at Pokrovsk, anchored by a trio of Jaeger and airborne brigades, is vastly outnumbered by a Russian army of eight or nine brigades and regiments. But in exchange for time and opportunities to bleed the Russians dry, the Ukrainians destroyed around 2,000 Russian vehicles and wasted 500.
The Kremlin temporarily produces enough new cars to offset all its losses on the Pokrovsk axis. Russian industry probably makes fewer than a thousand new infantry fighting vehicles per year. At the same time, stocks of vintage Cold War cars are running out. One of the main warehouses at the 22nd Central Tank Reserve Base in the Kostroma Oblast of western Russia is practically empty.
Hence the pickup trucks and cars—and the decisive defeat of that recent attack toward Pokrovsk.
But not all Russian strike teams are so poorly equipped. And not everyone is defeated. “By launching small, continuous attacks, Russian troops eventually reveal and exploit weak points in Ukraine’s defenses,” said Tatarigami, founder of the research organization Frontelligence Insight. “Although this technique causes large Russian losses, which are unsustainable in the long term, it has proven effective in the short and medium term. »
Just because the van-and-sedan attack failed doesn’t mean the Russian offensive as a whole will fail. The Russians are opposed to the imminent depletion of their vehicle reserves in order to conquer as much of Ukraine as possible. Time and wear and tear could save most of Ukraine, but not Pokrovsk.
Sources:
1. Official
2. Ukraine Control Map
3. Tatarigamis
4. Highmarsed
5. Naalsio
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