They first appear as a cloud of dust on the horizon. Seconds later, motorcycles carrying Russian soldiers sped into view, winding across fields and kicking up dust as they attempted a noisy and dangerous run through the Ukrainian trenches.
“They moved very fast, spread out, and then swerved,” said Lieutenant Mihailo Hubitsky, describing the Russian motorcycle attack he witnessed. Such attacks are spreading across the front lines this spring, adding a wild new element to an already violent, chaotic battle.
Russian soldiers on motorcycles, off-road vehicles, four-wheelers and dune buggies now account for about half of all attacks in some areas of the frontline, soldiers and commanders say, as Moscow’s forces try to exploit speed across exposed open spaces where hulking armored vehicles are stationed. The goal.
Reconnaissance drone footage shows these irregular vehicles appearing with such frequency that some trenches in Ukraine now overlook dumps of abandoned, bombed-out SUVs.
The new tactic is Russia’s latest adaptation to a mined, constantly monitored battlefield where Moscow’s forces struggle to make tiny tactical gains, often just a few hundred yards.
The furthest Russian advance in the area was 15 miles from the starting point.
“We are fighting a war every meter,” said Capt. Yaroslav, the 80th Air Assault Brigade artillery commander, as he fired rockets into Russian defenses earlier this week. He gave only his first name for security reasons.
Despite this, the Russian army remains on the offensive. Its gains have grown over time, and Russian forces are now close to strategically important supply lines and towns in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region.
Russia’s westward offensive has advanced about three miles in more than a year since seizing the city of Bahmut in May 2023. It now rests on a canal near the town of Chasiv Yar.
But now the Russians threaten to flank Ukrainian positions there, while also closing in on a key Ukrainian supply line, the Pokrovsk-Kostian Tinivka highway.
The risks to this supply route add new urgency to the fighting in the region. If Russia controlled or even threatened this road, it would slow down the flow of food, weapons and ammunition needed by Ukrainian forces to fight in Donbass. Two Russian missiles narrowly missed hitting a key highway bridge on Monday. Regional authorities said the attack left the bridge intact but caused casualties.
Beyond this, the Russian offensive also threatens two Ukrainian-controlled towns: Toletsk and New York, a small dot on the Ukrainian plain that got its name in the 19th century. If these towns fall, Russia will prepare to advance on the largest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region, Kostyandinivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.
This month, authorities stepped up civilian evacuations in Toletsk and New York, using trucks to evacuate the few remaining residents amid heavy bombing.
In the partially surrounded town, Russian artillery fire echoed off the mostly deserted streets. Gray smoke emitted during strike. On almost every block in New York there is a small brick house with a roof blown off by a shell. In Donbass, every town that Russia has captured since its full-scale invasion in 2022 has been bombed into rubble.
The evacuation was so hasty that residents had just minutes to load a bag or two into vans and leave the homes they had lived in all their lives.
Alina Olyak, a 69-year-old retired nurse and one of the evacuees, described the situation in the town of Toletsk over the past week as Russian troops advanced through the fields: “Boom, boom, boom ”.
“I’m saying goodbye to my lovely city,” Ms. Aurillac said. Russian troops are now about a mile from the city center. A truck used to evacuate Olyak on Monday was destroyed by shrapnel from a Russian rocket on Tuesday, injuring a volunteer working on the evacuation.
As the army advanced, the Russians tried various methods of crossing the exposed fields. The latest is a motorcycle attack.
Armored vehicles of both armies are easy targets due to the ubiquitous surveillance drones over Donbass. Faster moving motorcycles and dirt bikes are harder to hit with artillery. The disadvantage was that they provided no protection for Russian soldiers as they faced machine gun fire as they approached the trenches.
Sometimes, if Russian shelling succeeds in preventing Ukrainian soldiers from poking their heads out of the trenches, the cyclists are able to get through. Although risky, the tactic solved for both sides a key tactical challenge in the war in Ukraine: how to cross an open field filled with mines while under drone observation and artillery fire.
If they crossed a field, the knights ditched their bikes and entered Ukrainian trenches, fighting close quarters on foot.
“They jumped down and started shooting,” said Sapsan, a Ukrainian sergeant with the 47th Mechanized Brigade who asked to be identified only by his nickname to comply with his unit’s security regulations. “These dirt bikes and motorcycles are going very fast and flying right into our tree lines.”
Ukrainian soldiers said the motorcycle attack, like a wave of infantry attacks when Russia captured Bakhmut last year, caused huge casualties. These attacks did not replace the Russian advance using blunt advantages in the number of guns and ammunition. This is an additional strategy.
The use of cheap disposable off-road vehicles and off-road vehicles helps protect Russian armored vehicles as the Russian military draws on outdated Cold War-era tank stocks.
The new motorcycle tactics were executed simultaneously with another atypical form of attack, which employed the opposite strategy of attacking massively and slowly. The Russians welded sheet metal armor to tanks to protect against drone explosions, creating boxy, house-sized structures called Turtle tanks. Huge, cumbersome vehicles creaked and crawled across the fields, becoming another strange sight on the battlefield in Donbass.
Ukrainian soldiers say that on the battlefield, motorcyclists have good visibility and can swerve to avoid mines that armored vehicle operators may not see. Or they ride along tracks left by armored vehicles from earlier attacks, knowing there will be no mines along these routes.
But the riders were not immune to the shrapnel exploding around them. Once they approached the Ukrainian trenches, they were exposed to machine gun volleys.
“I don’t know how they find people willing to do this,” said Sergeant Vladimir, who also asked that his first name be used only to comply with military protocol. “Sometimes, none of them make it, and sometimes it’s all of them.”
Ukraine has also countered motorcycle attacks with explosive quadcopter drones flown by operators wearing virtual reality goggles, an improvised weapon that has emerged in Ukraine’s war because of its ability to attack moving armored vehicles. The battlefield was reshaped.
All of these obstacles can be fatal, as was the case with the attack witnessed by Lieutenant Hubitsky, when eight or nine dirt bike riders charged toward the Ukrainian trenches.
Lieutenant Hubitsky said Ukrainian soldiers opened fire with machine guns once the knights came within range. He said turning off-road vehicles are difficult targets. Some were hit, some were not. But in that incident, too few surviving Russians were able to form an effective force to raid the Ukrainian trenches. He said the survivors abandoned their bikes on the edge of a field and were killed in close combat.
But this did not stop Russian commanders from continuing to employ this tactic. “All the woods,” said Sergeant Sapsan of the 47th Brigade, “are now filled with these off-road vehicles and motorcycles.”
Aleksandra Mykolysin Reporting from the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine also contributed.
