A Russian Tank Battalion & 40 Bike Troops Attacked In Broad Daylight. Ukraine's Mines, Artillery & Drones Left Few Survivors.

The assault on Shakhove, north of Pokrovsk, squandered carefully stockpiled vehicle.

In early 2025, Russian forces in Ukraine essentially stopped attacking with armored vehicles. Instead, they sent in infantry—on foot or on motorcycles.

There were tactical reasons for the switch. It’s possible fast-moving bike troops and widely scattered infantry stand a better chance of avoiding detection by the tiny explosive drones that are everywhere all the time over the 700-mile no-man’s-land in Ukraine.

But there was a strategic reason, as well. The Kremlin was planning for what Ukrainian drone operator Kriegsforscher described as a “last, final battle” for eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. And it expected all those tanks and other armored vehicles it had saved up to lead the way.

The armored assaults began weeks later than Kriegsforscher and other observers expected. And they may have begun too late. Kriegsforscher warned that the coming winter, and the dying leaves on a billion trees still clinging to life in shell-pocked Donetsk, would deprive the Russians of concealment.

Sure enough, a drumbeat of Russian mechanized attacks in recent days has resolved the same way each time. Dozens of tanks and other vehicles roll out, often in the company of scores of bike troops. Ukrainian surveillance drones spot them coming—and explosive first-person-view drones and artillery take aim.

Pre-laid mines add to the carnage. As night falls, bomb-dropping vampire drones mop hunt the survivors.

A Thursday afternoon assault on the village of Shakhove, buttressing Ukrainian defenses along the eastern corner of a chaotic 25-square-mile salient just north of Pokrovsk, was horrifically typical. (See video at top.)