They first appeared on the horizon, raising a cloud of dust. Seconds later, motorcycles carrying Russian soldiers came racing in, zigzagging across the fields, kicking up clouds of dust as they tried to charge the Ukrainian trenches in a noisy and dangerous manner.
“They move fast, they spread out, they hide,” said Lieutenant Myhaylo Hubitsky, describing the Russian motorcycle attacks he witnessed, which have increased along the front line this spring, adding a new element of frenzy to an already violent, chaotic battle.
Russian soldiers on motorcycles, dirt bikes, four-wheelers and ATVs now account for about half of all attacks in some areas of the front line, soldiers and commanders say, as Moscow’s troops try to use speed to move through exposed open spaces where bulky armored vehicles are easy targets.
Video footage from reconnaissance drones shows these unconventional vehicles appearing with such frequency that junkyards of abandoned, bombed-out SUVs can now be seen in some Ukrainian trenches.
It’s the latest Russian tactic in a heavily mined, constantly monitored battlefield where Moscow’s troops seek to make small tactical advances, often just a few hundred yards.
The farthest Russian forces advanced in the area was 15 miles from their starting point.
“We are fighting for every meter,” said Captain Yaroslav, the artillery commander of the 80th Air Assault Brigade, which fired rockets into Russian defenses earlier this week. He gave only his first name for security reasons.
Despite this, Russian forces remain on the offensive, with gains increasing as time goes on, and are now approaching strategic supply lines and towns in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The Russian advance westward has advanced about three miles in more than a year since the capture of the city of Bakhmut in May 2023. Currently, the advance is blocked at a canal near the town of Chasiv Yar.
But now Russia is threatening to attack Ukrainian positions from the flank, while also approaching a key Ukrainian supply route, the Pokrovsk-Kostyantinovka highway.
The risk to this supply route adds urgency to the fighting on this part of the front. If Russia controls the road, or even threatens it, it would slow the flow of food, weapons and ammunition Ukrainian troops need to fight in Donbass. On Monday, two Russian missiles narrowly missed a key bridge on the highway. Local authorities said the attack missed the bridge but caused casualties.
Beyond that, the Russian offensive threatens two Ukrainian-held towns, Toretsk and New, a tiny dot on the Ukrainian plain that got its name in the 19th century. If those towns fall, Russia will prepare to launch offensives against the region’s remaining largest Ukrainian-held cities, Kostianivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
This month, authorities stepped up evacuations of civilians from Toretsk and New York, removing the few remaining residents in vans amid heavy bombing.
Inside partially besieged towns, Russian artillery fire echoed through nearly empty streets. Plumes of gray smoke rose from the shelling. On nearly every block in New York, there was a small brick house with its roof collapsed by artillery shells. In Donbass, every town Russia has occupied since the full-scale invasion in 2022 has been bombed into ruins.
The evacuation was rushed, with residents having only minutes to load a bag or two of trash onto a truck and leave the homes they had lived in all their lives.
“Boom, boom, boom,” is how Alina Olyak, a 69-year-old retired nurse, described the town of Toretsk as Russian troops gradually advanced toward the fields over the past week.
“I’m saying goodbye to my lovely city,” Ms. Olyaq said. Russian troops are now about a mile from the city center. The van that took Ms. Olyaq away on Monday was destroyed by shrapnel from a Russian rocket on Tuesday, wounding a volunteer carrying out the evacuation.
As the army advanced, the Russians tried a variety of methods to move through exposed terrain. The latest was the motorcycle assault.
With the skies over Donbass swarming with reconnaissance drones, armored vehicles from both armies are easy targets. Faster motorcycles and off-road vehicles are harder to hit by artillery fire. The downside is that they offer no protection for Russian soldiers, exposing them to machine gun fire as they approach trenches.
Sometimes, if Russian artillery fire succeeded in preventing Ukrainian soldiers from poking their heads out of their trenches, the riders were able to get through. Although risky, the strategy addressed a key tactical challenge facing both sides in the Ukrainian war: how to cross open terrain littered with mines while under surveillance by drones and artillery fire.
If they crossed a field, the riders would abandon their bikes, enter the Ukrainian trenches and engage in close combat on foot.
“They jumped out and started shooting,” said Sapsan, a sergeant with Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, who asked to be identified only by a nickname to comply with his unit’s safety protocols. “These SUVs and motorcycles were going very fast and flew right into our woods.”
Ukrainian soldiers say the motorcycle attacks, like the infantry assaults that Russia launched to capture Bakhmut last year, have inflicted heavy casualties. These attacks are not a replacement for Russian forces advancing using their overwhelming superiority in artillery and ammunition. It is an additional tactic.
Since the Russian military can only use its stockpile of vintage tanks from the Cold War, using cheap, disposable off-road vehicles and SUVs helps conserve Russia’s armored vehicles.
The new motorcycle tactics were implemented in conjunction with another atypical attack method that used the opposite strategy, moving slowly and cumbersomely. The Russians welded metal plate armor to tanks to protect them from drone explosions, creating a boxy structure the size of a house, known as the Turtle Tank. These huge, hulking vehicles, creaking slowly across fields, became another bizarre sight on the battlefields of Donbass.
Ukrainian soldiers said that in the fields, motorcyclists have good vision and can swerve to avoid mines that armored vehicle drivers might not see. Or they follow tracks left by armored vehicles in previous attacks because they know those routes are free of mines.
But the cavalrymen had no protection against the shells exploding around them, and once they approached the Ukrainian trenches they were exposed to machine-gun salvos.
“I don’t know how they find people willing to do this,” said Volodymyr, a noncommissioned officer who also asked to be identified by only his first name to comply with military protocol. “Sometimes none of them succeed, and sometimes all of them succeed.”
Ukraine has also countered motorcycle attacks with explosive quadcopter drones flown by operators wearing virtual reality goggles, an improvised weapon that has emerged in the Ukrainian war and has changed the battlefield by enabling it to strike armored vehicles on the move.
All of these obstacles can be deadly, as in the attack Lieutenant Hubitsky witnessed, when eight or nine motocross riders charged toward the Ukrainian trenches.
Lieutenant Shubitsky said Ukrainian soldiers opened fire with machine guns once the riders came within range. The scurrying dirt bikes were difficult targets, he said. Some were hit, some were not. But there were too few surviving Russians in that battle to form an effective force to overrun the Ukrainian trenches. The survivors abandoned their bikes at the edge of a field and were killed in close combat, he said.
That hasn’t stopped Russian commanders from using the tactic. “All the woods are now full of these off-road vehicles and motorcycles,” said Sapsan, a sergeant with the 47th Brigade.
Oleksandra Mikolishin Reports from the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine also contributed.
