Today, there are a lot of interesting updates from the Toretsk direction, Donetsk Oblast.
Here, in push to outflank Toretsk from the east, Russian forces turned to motorcycle-mounted assaults across open terrain. However, Ukrainian defenders recalibrated the anti-tank mines to meet the motorcycle charge and turned the flanking attempt into a costly failure before it ever reached the front line.
Russian forces are experiencing many difficulties and suffering high losses due to their fighting through Toretsk. Because the approach of fighting through the town is rapidly becoming unsustainable, they are seeking an alternative route, hoping to pressure Ukrainian flanks and force them to withdraw and surrender Toretsk to Russian forces.
Previously, the Russian forces attempted this by assaulting the southern flank of Toretsk around Shcherbynivka, but were pushed back by fighters of the Azov brigade. This is why the Russians decided to try to assault across the northern flank towards Dachne and Dylivka. The terrain here consists primarily of open fields, a railway line, and patches of trees. This setting allows the Russians to conduct mechanized and motorized assaults to use higher maneuverability and heavy armor to their advantage.
For their first assault, the Russians accumulated tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in Druzhba, banking on heavy armor to make it across the fields and deploy their infantry. Geolocated combat footage reveals that the Russian column was unusually slow, with Russians transforming their armor into so-called turtle tanks, using wood, rubber, and metal chains to protect themselves from anti-tank kamikaze drones. However, this resulted in a crawling pace, allowing Ukrainian drones ample time to carefully find weak points in the armor and disable the vehicles with repeated pinpoint strikes.
As the heavy armor, low mobility approach failed, Russian commanders decided to instead deploy mobile units made up of motorbikes to reach the Ukrainian positions in Dylivka. Geolocated footage shows that the second Russian assault group, consisting entirely of motorbike infantry, was able to get much closer to Ukrainian positions than the mechanized assault could; some of them even reaching Ukrainian positions in Dylivka before they could be intercepted by FPV drones.
In the end, it made no difference, as Ukrainians tracked every building the dismounted Russian soldiers had entered and made sure they were eliminated. However, as they mopped up the survivors, Ukrainians realized they had a major vulnerability in their defenses and needed to ensure no further Russian motorbike assaults could come so close to their positions.
The main weakness was that the minefields full of anti-tank landmines only triggered on heavy vehicles such as cars, armored vehicles, and tanks, making them ineffective against light vehicles such as motorcycles. This is why Ukrainians ramped up the use of anti-personnel and wire-triggered landmines, which can detonate under the light pressure of a soldier’s foot, or in this case, a motorbike’s wheels. Additionally, Ukrainian sappers modified their self-made mines to also trigger on much lighter weight, recalibrating and fine-tuning the explosives specifically to eliminate Russian motorcycle-based infantry.
During the third and final assault, Russian forces attempted a combined push using both armored vehicles and motorbikes, hoping the combined effort of heavy armor and rapid maneuvers would overwhelm Ukrainian defenders, allowing them to break through. Unfortunately for Russians, as Ukrainian sappers had successfully recalibrated the minefields, Ukrainian drone operators could dedicate their complete focus on swarming and destroying the Russian heavy armor.
Geolocated footage shows that the recalibration had indeed been extremely effective, with Russian motorbikes laying damaged or burning by the side of the road, as Ukrainian drones were easily able to finish off the wounded or surviving riders, after they were flung off their bikes in the explosions.
Overall, the geolocations show that Russians did not even come close to Ukrainian positions, indicating that Ukrainians effectively patched the weakness in their lines, and that they are now stronger for it. The heavily armored turtle tanks, despite not going down in one hit, are often so slow that Ukrainian drones have ample time to swarm them and disable them through repeated strikes.
While the rapid Russian motorcycle assault exposed a weakness in Ukrainian defenses, after Ukrainian sappers recalibrated their mines, Russia’s final push with both heavy armor and bikes collapsed long before it reached Ukrainian lines.
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.
