Dramatic footage shows Vladimir Putin’s ‘suicide bikers’ speeding into no-man’s land during desperate one-way missions.
The troops are sent by their commanders as part of a new tactic to try and overcome Volodymyr Zelensky’s soldiers.
They’re instructed to breach Ukrainian defences and cause as much chaos behind enemy lines as possible.
But the method is reportedly ineffective, and the bikers are often taken out by drones or artillery fire. Some even destroy themselves by crashing into shell craters.
Most of the bikers don’t even make it as far as enemy lines, but the life expectancy of those who do is little improved as they are stranded and surrounded.
‘Basically it’s a suicide mission,’ Yevhen, a lieutenant captain in Ukraine’s 28th brigade, told The Times. ‘Because they never come back.’
A video shows three bikers, dubbed ‘iron horses’ by Russian forces, roaring across fields near Toretsk before they’re blown up by a drone.
Motorbikes first appeared along this stretch of the front roughly three months ago, according to Yevhen.
He said within a few weeks motorcycle assaults had become a daily occurrence – with between ten and 20 bikers spreading across a width of about 400m before speeding towards his regiment.
The bikes can only be intercepted by skilled drone pilots as their speed and irregular grouping makes them difficult targets to hit.
However, the area of no man’s land near Toretsk is so wide that usually only about a quarter will make it across.
Those that do survive try to destroy as many enemy drone and mortar crews, who are less well-armed than regular infantrymen, as they can before being killed or captured themselves, Yevhen said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes that a servicemember in a Ukrainian brigade reported on June 24 that the threat of Russian motorcycle assaults is increasing as soldiers increasingly integrate them into assault tactics.
It stated that the vehicles are ‘no longer attacking along roads but mainly attacking through open fields and trying to bypass Ukrainian engineering barriers along the frontline’.
Russia began using motorbikes last year, initially as a grassroots initiative among certain regiments faced with heavy losses from traditional infantry raids.
The idea gained traction and the use of motorbikes has now been formally integrated into the army’s tactics, with some units now given specialised rider training.
In April, Russia’s ministry of defence released a video showing a paratrooper with a gun over his shoulder riding around a motocross track while explosions detonated around him.
The ministry plans to equip more than half of its infantry forces with motorcycles, as well as other vehicles including quadbikes and buggies, according to leaked documents seen by Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian open-source intelligence agency.
Russian forces are ‘mainly using motorcycles as a form of transport for attacking infantry to support diversion, reconnaissance, infiltration, and flanking support missions’, the documents say, according to the agency.
The documents also reportedly said that Russian motorcyclists operate in squads of six to eight motorcycles with one or two riders on each motorcycle, between six and 16 personnel in total.