The occupation army of the Russian Federation is increasingly using high-speed vehicles during attacks on Ukrainian military positions instead of heavy armored vehicles, which the occupiers have fewer and fewer of.
Why is the Russian army increasingly using ATVs at the front
Journalists of the publication, referring to the intelligence data of Western countries, note that by giving preference to high-speed vehicles at the front, the occupying army of the Russian Federation sacrifices the protection provided by heavily armoured vehicles.
An updated intelligence report from the British Ministry of Defense notes that over the past few months, the Russian occupiers have increased the use of light vehicles to transfer troops along the entire front line.
In addition, the Russian occupiers used high-speed vehicles to carry out night attacks on Ukrainian military positions.
Ukrainian troops used ATVs as early as April 2022 to ambush Russian troops.
Already in February 2024, the Armed Forces soldiers noted that Russian ATVs are more manoeuvrable than tracked vehicles, making them more challenging to hit with artillery.
It is likely that Russian forces will increasingly resort to using lighter and faster vehicles to conduct reconnaissance of Ukrainian defensive positions to enable subsequent fire using artillery, first-person-view cameras (FPV) or unilateral strike drones, in an attempt to consistently weaken the OWA Ukrainian forces, the report of the British Ministry of Defense emphasizes.
British intelligence notes that Russia has purchased thousands of Desertcross 1000-3 ATVs from China.
How the tactics of the Russian army changed with the beginning of the use of ATVs at the front
According to Rob Lee, a senior researcher at the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, one of these vehicles, which is in service with Russia's 177th Marine Regiment, was equipped with an anti-drone screen.
This improvised drone protection — a cage-like mesh, sometimes called a "coop cage" — is widely used on Russian and Ukrainian armored vehicles, including tanks. In fact, this is an additional level of protection that is installed as a last resort to protect against such threats as drones and artillery, the authors of the material explain.
It is noted that such light vehicles are more vulnerable to attacks by the Ukrainian military. Still, the occupation army of the Russian Federation has already lost hundreds of units of heavily armoured vehicles in Ukraine.
For his part, Pavlo Fedosenko, the commander of the 92nd Airborne Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told The Economist in an interview that the pace of Russian attacks changed with the change in vehicles.
According to him, a few weeks ago, Russian troops carried out attacks every few hours together with a group of armoured vehicles.
However, the Russian army currently uses ATVs and motorcycles to attack in small groups every few days, looking for weak points in the defense of Ukrainian forces.
