Thomas Krych/Anadolu via Getty Images
- Small Russian units are seemingly appearing out of nowhere and infiltrating front-line Ukrainian positions.Ukrainian soldiers said that the Russians' goals are to take positions and cause chaos.The tactic is becoming increasingly more common.
Guided by drones while attempting to stay hidden from enemy eyes, small Russian infiltration teams are creeping across the front lines and stirring up trouble for Ukrainian forces already exhausted and stretched thin.
Ukrainian soldiers told Business Insider the tactic causes chaos and is becoming increasingly problematic. They said that the Russian teams often consist of just a few troops and are treated as expendable.
The Russian infiltrators have different missions. Some try to seize key positions and hold them until reinforcements arrive, while others focus on disrupting Ukrainian defenses by exposing drone operations or planting mines near their positions.
The infiltration tactic isn't new, said Artem, an officer in Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps, who requested to be identified only by his first name for security reasons, but now, what used to be a rarer occurrence is happening more often.
Soldiers say that it's becoming the norm. The incursions have "become the main battle tactic" in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, an area of heavy fighting, said Dimko Zhluktenko, a drone operator with Kyiv's Unmanned Systems Forces.
He called the tactic "troublesome" because it is effective and allows Russia to push deeper into Ukrainian territory.
Viktor Fridshon/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
'Problematic'
The front line stretches for some 800 miles across eastern and southern Ukraine, making it difficult to consistently monitor in every direction, even with the constant surveillance provided by drones. Manpower shortages make it difficult to cover every inch, creating opportunities for surprise enemy incursions.
Artem, a former deputy commander in Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade and the current head of military partnerships at the independent Snake Island Institute, described instances where Russia would send out just a few soldiers at a time, wearing hunting coats or employing tents to hide and avoid detection.
Their movements are guided by commanders who watch through an overhead drone and relay critical information via radio. Once they slip past the front lines, the Russian infiltrators start causing problems. Ukrainian special operations forces do the same thing.
Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
Artem said that the infiltration units go from one point to another as their commander instructs. Once they arrive unnoticed at a location, they can accumulate more soldiers at that spot. Follow-on action then forces Ukraine to divert troops from other areas of the front line to deal with the incursion, which appears to form out of nowhere.
He recalled a situation in which Ukrainian forces were trying to maintain control of about 6 miles of the front but lacked the ability to cover all of it. The Russians seized the opportunity, and at one point, the Ukrainians were scrambling to respond to and repel Russian incursions in 14 different locations simultaneously.
He said that there have also been cases where a Russian soldier breaches the front line without carrying any guns, just an anti-tank mine. Their sole purpose was to drop the mine into Ukrainian positions and blow them up.
Tykhyi, a Ukrainian officer who requested to be identified only by their call sign for security reasons, said that in addition to infantry forces, Russia also uses motorcyclists for its incursions.
Ukrainian drone operators can respond to these incursions, but when they do, they give away their positions. Russia — watching — can identify bases and launch areas, they said.
Zhluktenko, the drone operator, said Russian infiltration teams sometimes start their missions several miles from the front on foot. They hide in the tree lines or in abandoned homes as they hike toward their objectives. Some soldiers survive, but many of them are killed by drones or artillery strikes.
TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/AFP via Getty Images
He said that Russian losses are "enormous" and soldiers are treated as "expendable resources." It's "problematic," he said. "There are hundreds of Russians who are ready to die in those pointless assaults every day, and it's never-ending."
Russia's defense ministry and its US embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Russian forces have used costly infiltration, probing, and human-wave tactics throughout the war, with some of the most brutal cases being documented in eastern Ukraine, long a point of intense fighting.
Some of these tactics have even extended to the North Koreans who deployed to fight with Russia against Ukraine in Kursk. The US said at the time that Pyongyang's troops were being used in largely ineffective human-wave assaults.
