A Russian bike troop misses a jump.
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
As the Russian military loses more armored vehicles in Ukraine than it can immediately replace, and sends more troops into battle on motorcycles, there are tragic consequences for the riders.
Not only are bike troops totally exposed to Ukrainian drones, artillery and mines—they may also be tempted to try feats of motorcycle aerobatics that would be difficult in peacetime, and are nearly impossible on the battlefield.
As a Ukrainian drone observed on or just before Thursday, a Russian bike soldier raced, in broad daylight, across the no-man’s-land somewhere along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 39-month wider war on Ukraine. His luck held, at first. No mines or shells exploded. No first-person-view drones swooped down.
But then he neared the simplest possible defense: a hole in the ground. Specifically, a long anti-tank ditch seemingly around 20 feet across and 20 feet deep. Apparently confident in his bike-handling, the rider accelerated up the loose dirt piled up on the edge of the trench, clearly aiming to jump the trench.
He fell short—and died, or was badly injured, in the resulting crash.
Stunt riders such as the late Evel Knievel routinely jump their motorcycles hundreds of feet. But they usually do so after careful planning—and rarely on loose dirt ramps. In theory, leaping a 20-foot gap from a 45-degree ramp should be straightforward if the bike is traveling 20 miles per hour or so.
But the “ramp” in this case was a haphazardly piled berm meant to impede armored vehicles—not boost a speeding biker. Jumping from sand or loose dirt requires careful handling, as bikes tend to nose up on that kind of surface. Mastering the handling “this takes many years of riding to get nailed,” one biker explained on a popular motorcyclists’ forum.
The Russian bike troopers’ tragic crash made him just another statistic. Most recent Russian bike assaults have ended disastrously for the riders. On April 17, an unprecedented 150 Russian motorcyclists—reinforced by additional troops riding on all-terrain vehicles—attacked positions held by the Ukrainian 14th Chervona Kalyna Brigade around Myrolyubivka, a few miles east of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
The bike assault ended in disaster for the Russians. The 14th Chervona Kalyna Brigade “delivered a decisive blow against waves of Russian equipment and manpower,” the Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine reported.
“Despite the scale of the assault, Ukrainian troops held their ground and repelled the entire attack with discipline and precision.” The Ukrainian brigade claimed heavy Russian losses, including at least 240 troops killed or wounded and 96 motorcycles knocked out.
But the bike assaults occasionally work—and, to the Kremlin, an occasional success justifies frequent failure. It’s standard practice, as the wider war grinds into its fourth year, for Russian regiments to send under-trained, unprotected troops on “reconnaissance-by-force” missions in the early hours of a planned offensive—often on motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles or even electric scooters.
“These are ordered to advance towards where they assess Ukrainian positions to be, conducting reconnaissance by drawing fire,” Nick Reynolds and Jack Watling explained in a recent study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“If the group encounters resistance, Russian commanders assess where they believe the best lines of approach are, and in particular, where the boundaries between defensive units lie,” Reynolds and Watling added. “If Ukrainian positions are positively identified, sections are persistently sent forward.”
Last week, the Russian 39th Motor Rifle Brigade found an under-manned weak spot in the Ukrainian trench outside the village of Malynivka, just outside Pokrovsk. Drones knocked out counterattacking Ukrainian armored vehicles, and Russian infantry captured that segment of the trench.
