Russia's motorbike squads may be suicidal but they are hurting Ukraine
The roar of engines rumble across no man's land before a pack of Russian soldiers mounted on motorbikes emerge from a cloud of dust on the horizon.
Ukrainian drones spring into action and the race is on. Without any cover, the riders have just minutes to zigzag across mines and craters to reach an enemy trench-line before they are picked off.
The odds are not in their favour.
Since they were trialled over a year ago, most motorbike attacks have ended in failure, with the majority of riders killed before they can reach their target.
Yet, those that are successful solve a key tactical challenge in Ukraine: how to cross an open battlefield under constant surveillance from above – and fast.
Russia's military is said to be planning to systematically integrate motorbikes across the front ahead of new offensives.
Run, stab, escape
Plenty of lives will be lost, but Russia's precious armoured vehicles will be saved – an apparent victory in the eyes of a military that has a steady stream of manpower, but is forced to draw on a rusting stockpile of Soviet-era tanks that have proven unsuitable for the battlefields of Ukraine.
The first reports of motorbikes squads started to appear in April 2024. It began as an informal, ad hoc response to persistent drone strikes, which now kill or maim up to 70 per cent of all soldiers and destroy more armoured vehicles than all other weapons systems combined.
Since autumn last year, there has been a considerable increase in bike-led attacks in Ukraine's north-eastern Kharkiv region and Donetsk to the east, where Russia largely abandoned armoured vehicle usage after suffering unsustainable losses in the winter of 2023 to 2024.
The attacks are fast-paced, but deeply flawed. For months on end, drone footage has shown the remnants of such failures, which have turned the edges of fields and Ukrainian trench lines into a junk yard of twisted metal and burnt tyres.
It is not just bikes, but all kinds of unconventional unarmoured vehicles turning up at the front, including quad bikes, civilian cars, Chinese-made buggies and electric scooters.
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