Anton, a fighter from Ukraine’s 58th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade named after Hetman Ivan Vyhovskyi, known as Shket, has spent a year holding the line on some of the fiercest frontlines in Donetsk Oblast.

Over the last 12 months, he’s faced a wide range of Russian occupiers, from mobilized conscripts to convicts, Yakuts, and even Koreans.

“It was hell,” the soldier recalls.

The toughest position he held was a half-destroyed customs checkpoint that came under daily assaults, twice a day for 17 days straight, by Russian assault groups, including a unit made up of former inmates.

“When we checked their documents, it was clear — they were convicts recruited in Butyrka prison. They were given the cheapest body armor. Their commander didn’t even have a helmet. Command sent them straight to die,” Shket says. 

Shket explains that each Russian group has its own characteristics.

“Yakuts are a bit more stubborn, but they charge in just the same, without thinking. The Koreans, though — they’re young, resilient, and actually well-trained. But we can and must destroy them. It’s either us or them. There’s no third option,” the Ukrainian soldiers reveal. 

Despite his injuries, Anton remains resolute.

“I’m always ready to return as soon as I can. We should take example not from those who talk, but from those who act, even when it’s terrifying,” he adds. 

Currently undergoing treatment in a military hospital, first for a severe concussion and more recently for a new injury, Shket was wounded again after stepping on a Russian explosive device while returning to the front to relieve his comrades after heavy rotations.

Russian motorcycle assault tactics have spread to the southern front of Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine. The result in the south is the same as in the east. A lot of Russia’s southern bike troops are getting killed by Ukrainian mines, drones and artillery. 

But as in the east, the few southern bikers who survive can make dangerous dents in Ukrainian lines. The bike attacks are almost always fatal for the troops who attempt them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work.

Ukrainian commanders should think twice before copying the method, however. The Russians can afford to lose troops. The Ukrainians can’t.

The Ukrainian armed forces’ southern task force claimed the Russians attacked “in the Malynivka area” on Friday. But analysts geolocated the site of the attack in Nesteryanka, 40 miles to the east in the same oblast.

In any event, the attack failed as around a dozen bike troops ran over mines, got plinked by drones or blasted by artillery. “Their plan was doomed to failure,” the Ukrainian southern task force stated. “Our soldiers met the motorcycle assaults with dense fire, and as a result, all the enemy equipment burned down! Not a single occupier passed!”

The Ukrainian defenders, possibly from the 65th Mechanized Brigade, were lucky. The thinking behind the Russian bike attacks is perverse, but not insane. “It involves heavy losses, but it still has certain results,” the Ukrainian Peaky Blinders drone unit explained.

“For example, 20 motorcycles are going, some of them are destroyed by artillery, some by drones, someone is eliminated by mining and our infantry will get someone in a gun battle. But several motorcycles still have a chance to jump into the landing.”

It only takes a few infiltrating Russian troops to create a lodgement inside Ukrainian lines—one that can grow into a larger breach. In deploying large numbers of bike troops, Russian commanders are playing the odds—and betting that a few will eventually ride unscathed past Ukrainian mines, drones and artillery. 

“Behind them is the same group, then more and more,” Peaky Blinders warned. The Friday bike attack in Zaporizhzhia may have failed, but the next one might not.

Abundant manpower

This costly assault method only works for the Kremlin because it has manpower in abundance. Motivated by generous enlistment bonuses and apparently believing Russia is winning the wider war, 30,000 fresh troops sign up for Russia’s war effort every month. That’s slightly more troops than Russia loses every month in Ukraine. Even the “suicidal bike attacks” haven’t tipped Russia’s manpower balance into a monthly deficit.

But Ukraine doesn’t have a durable manpower surplus. So it’s worth questioning the decision by one elite Ukrainian unit to form its own motorcycle assault group. The 425th Separate Assault Regiment organized its bike company, the first in the Ukrainian armed forces, last month. 

“During the training, the fighters spent hundreds of hours behind the wheel and practiced shooting in motion, firing thousands of rounds,” the regiment announced. “As a result, we have a modern cavalry whose main task is to rapidly break into enemy positions, carry out assault actions and quickly change the direction of strike.”

But can the regiment afford to lose almost all the bike troops it sends into battle? And will the Ukrainian people accept the loss of life? 

The Russians are determined to advance north in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. “Russian troops conduct six to seven attacks daily in the direction of Malynivka,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted. One of these attacks may eventually succeed—and open a gap in Ukrainian lines that Russian reinforcements can exploit. 

Even if the effort succeeds, it will come at the cost of most of the bike troops carrying out the initial assaults. “The majority of these bikers are suicidal,” Peaky Blinders observed. “But apparently they are completely satisfied with it.”

Ukrainians might not be so satisfied dying like that.

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Russia’s ghost riders are storming Sumy—and they’re not meant to come back

Today, there are interesting updates from the Kupiansk direction. Here, as Russian losses have officially hit an unprecedented 1 million count, the breaking point finally came, and the soldiers began turning their rifles on their own commanders rather than face certain death in futile assaults.

Three bullets on road to Nyzhnia Duvanka

In one of the most brutal recent examples of growing disorder within Russian ranks, several Russian soldiers near the settlement of Nyzhnia Duvanka in the Luhansk region turned on their own.

By shooting and killing the military police platoon commander and two of his barrier troop subordinates and running away, they sparked a frantic search operation by Russian authorities.

The deserters left their comrades to lie dead on the road while fleeing to save their lives from both Ukrainian and Russian fire.

Pischane funnel: Where men disappear

This violent mutiny did not emerge in a vacuum; it is directly tied to the hopeless bloodbath unfolding near the Kupiansk front, specifically at the Pischane funnel. For months, Russian forces have tried and failed to break through Ukrainian defenses here.

The Ukrainians have created a deadly trap by controlling the flanks, exposing any Russian assault to relentless drone and artillery fire from both sides. Yet commanders continue to send wave after wave of infantry into the funnel, hoping to drive a wedge through Ukrainian lines.

Every new wave knows exactly how it will end, as almost no one from previous groups returns alive. The systematic nature of these assaults has been likened to mass execution, with soldiers pushed forward not for tactical gain but to serve as human battering rams.

Mad Max cars and vanishing men

To make matters worse, Russian troops are being sent into combat in improvised Mad Max-style vehicles, like the Gaz-69, which entered production in 1952, the year of Stalin’s death, and regular cars fitted with rudimentary armor or even none.

Such improvised motorcycle squads and barely armored vehicles now lead the charge, only to be annihilated by Ukrainian FPV drones well before reaching the contact line. These desperate measures highlight not only material shortages but a total disregard for the lives of Russian troops.

Ukrainian surveillance drones ensure that almost no movement goes undetected, meaning most assaults are decimated long before they engage the defenders.

When running is not option

Despite the carnage, desertions in the Russian army remain surprisingly rare. The reason lies in the sheer brutality of the punishments for refusing to fight.

Soldiers who resist are subjected to medieval-style torture. Some are thrown into pits without food before being forced to fight each other to the death to earn the right to live another day.

In one documented case, soldiers were tied behind vehicles and dragged through the dirt, while other deserters were forced to bury each other alive as punishment and to serve as an example. In the Lyman area, a surrendering Russian soldier was spotted by Russian drone operators and targeted by his own artillery.

This highlights the impossible choice facing many: surrender and be killed or desert and be hunted. For some, turning against their officers seems to be the only escape.

This toxic atmosphere has bred a surge in violent retaliation. Russian soldiers, driven to the brink by the realization that dying in a pointless assault is their fate if they continue, are increasingly likely to choose to kill their commanders instead, as it is safer than being spotted attempting to surrender to the Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, commanders themselves contribute to the decay by labeling active soldiers as deserters to avoid paying their wages, denying them medical care, and forcing under-equipped men into combat.

A recent appeal by the families of men from the Russian 54th Motorized Rifle Regiment revealed horrifying conditions: soldiers were beaten and handcuffed, robbed of personal belongings, and left to die without evacuation.

Wounded men are forced to crawl back to safety, and the dead are simply abandoned, confirmed by footage showing bodies of dead Russian soldiers that haven’t been moved for months since the snow covered the fields.

Million-man grave and rot within

The downward spiral is accelerating. Russian military losses have just surpassed one million casualties, including killed, wounded, and captured.

Equipment losses are equally staggering, with 10,000 destroyed and damaged tanks and over 20,000 armored vehicles of various types.

Lacking armor, modern vehicles, or meaningful support, commanders now rely on sheer manpower and suicidal frontal attacks to advance the line ever so slowly. But the more men are lost, the worse morale gets, and the more inclined troops are coming to view their superiors as the enemy instead of the Ukrainians they are forced to fight.

Overall, such events create a vicious cycle.

The collapse of discipline and the dehumanizing tactics employed by Russian commanders will inevitably lead to more incidents where soldiers turn their weapons on their leaders.

To prevent this, the officers are only doubling down on cruelty, inventing new, more barbaric punishments. This internal rot may not only undermine Russia’s ability to continue the war, but it could also ultimately sabotage its war effort from within.

In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.