Ukraine army employing RPG's effectively against Russian vehicles

Russian resupply truck destroyed in Kyiv

CNN just showed some incredible footage of Ukrainian troops in what appeared to be a suburb of a large city engaging Russian vehicles with RPG’s — Rocket Propelled Grenades. The RPG being used in Ukraine was developed by the Soviet Union and first deployed to its military in the early 1960’s. It is a long tube with a finned warhead affixed to the front end. When it’s fired, a “rocket” motor propels the warhead toward the target. It can be easily reloaded with another warhead because the warheads carry their own propulsion.

The Ukrainian troops came around the end of a building and crouched down and fired at some Russian vehicles down the road. There were four Russian vehicles stopped in the road closer to the troops which turned out to have been already destroyed.

Another section of the video showed the troops approaching the Russian vehicles they had knocked out. They were Humvee-type troop carriers. There were no dead Russians visible. It was clear that the Russian vehicles were the ones the troops shown earlier in the video had hit and knocked out. The Russian vehicles further down the road that the troops had been firing at were not in evidence, apparently retreating after having seen that the first four of their vehicles had been destroyed.

The absence of dead Russian bodies tells me one thing: when the Russians came under RPG fire, they had a choice. Either hit the gas and get the hell out of there or abandon the vehicles, because if you stay inside a vehicle and it’s hit by an RPG you’re dead. Apparently, the Ukrainians had hit the lead vehicle and knocked it out. The others were stopped and the Russian soldiers ran. They were not in evidence, apparently running from the Ukrainians who were also armed with AK-47’s. If the Russians had stayed around, they would have come under fire by the Ukrainians.

The CNN footage shows a couple of things. The Ukrainians are well trained in urban warfare. They were on foot and remained concealed as they first engaged the Russians who were “mounted,” to use military terminology, in combat vehicles. It was clear the Ukrainians knew the neighborhood, they knew where they were, they knew what the Russian’s options were when they engaged them.

CNN had other footage of destroyed Russian resupply trucks and fuel trucks somewhere in or near Kyiv. An RPG will send a fuel truck to kingdom come. Resupply convoys have to be well defended in order to reach the tanks and other vehicles they are trying to resupply. The U.S. army employs airpower to defend its resupply convoys, usually attack helicopters or even Air Force jets. There must not have been any aircover for the Russian convoy that was hit and destroyed in the CNN footage.

There was one report on Twitter of a Russian resupply vehicle running out of gas and the two soldiers who were driving it walked into a local Ukrainian police station and turned themselves in. I have seen unconfirmed reports of Russian soldiers turning over their weapons to Ukrainian forces and telling them that they can’t do it, meaning kill Ukrainians.

I think the Russian forces are having trouble with their resupply lines because the Ukrainian military is hitting them from concealed positions, much like a guerilla force would. The Russians can drive as many tanks as they want into Ukrainian cities, but if they can’t get gas and ammunition to them, and food to their soldiers, they’ve got big problems.

The war has now been going on since Thursday night. Russian soldiers are away from their bases across the Russian border where they had tents and bunks to sleep on. Russian soldiers are low on sleep and getting lower on supplies, and they are still on the move because they haven’t “taken” either Kyiv or Kharkiv, the first two targets they were apparently ordered to attack. Ukrainians live there. They can take naps in people’s houses and apartments. They can be resupplied by their own units or by the local populace.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Putin’s strategy was to go in with “shock and awe” and rapidly take major cities and achieve a quick surrender of the Ukrainian government. Putin apparently thought it would be largely over in a few days.

Well, it’s been a few days and Ukrainians are fighting hard. Roads in Ukraine are littered with dead Russian vehicles including tanks and armored personnel carriers. The invasion is stalled. Putin may be hoping that by agreeing to talks with representatives of the Ukraine government on the border with Belarus, he can buy some time to resupply his forces and get them restarted. From what I’ve seen on CNN, that strategy won’t work. His forces are in Ukraine and they’re getting hit hard. Russia’s war is proving to have a larger price than Putin counted on.