Russians Try To Fight Using Captured Ukraine Armor - And Get Slaughtered

Both sides in Ukraine have used vehicles captured from the other. The difference is that the Ukrainians spend time training their forces on how best to use them.

The Russians dont bother, with predictable results. JL

David Axe reports in Forbes:

Russian vehicle losses, and the withdrawal of old vehicles from storage, have accelerated since December. Worse for the Russians: many of the vehicles remaining in storage are so badly rusted after decades of exposure to rain and snow that they’re useless as anything but scrap. Russian troops have captured at least five intact YPR-765 APCs. On Friday, the Russians rode one of their ex-Dutch, ex-Ukrainian APCs back into battle in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian forces hit the YPR-765, burning it and killing at least two Russians. A Ukrainian drone observed the gruesome aftermath.

In 1977, a consortium of Dutch companies led by U.S. firm FMC began building the first of more than 2,000 YPR-765 tracked armored personnel carriers for the Dutch army.

 

Thirty-five years later, the Dutch retired the last of the 15-ton, 10-person APCs. And 10 years after that, The Netherlands pledged the first of 269 surplus YPR-765s to Ukraine.

In the 29 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, Russian troops have captured at least five intact YPR-765s. And on or shortly before Friday, the Russians rode one of their ex-Dutch, ex-Ukrainian APCs back into battle in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

Ukrainian forces hit the YPR-765, burning it and killing at least two Russians. A Ukrainian drone observed the gruesome aftermath.

Besides being an historical oddity with a storied past, the Russian-operated YPR-765 is yet another data point in one of the most important trends as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its third year: the Russians are running out of armored vehicles. It’s not for no reason that they had to repurpose a captured Dutch vehicle from the late 1970s.

The Russian military went to war in Ukraine in early 2022 with around 11,000 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers—the main vehicles for transporting infantry into battle and supporting them with gunfire.

On the drone-infested, artillery-peppered battlefields in Ukraine, IFVs and APCs are arguably more important than tanks. Which is why, early in the wider war, Carnegie Endowment analyst Michael Kofman warned that “the main Russian shortfall in armored vehicles is not in tanks, but in IFVs.”

 

To make the good the losses and equip new units, Russian industry has produced maybe a couple of thousand new vehicles—and also retrieved from long-term storage as many as 7,000 old vehicles.

But the storage sites are becoming increasingly bare. In December, analysts scoured satellite imagery and concluded that stocks of BTR-60/70/80 wheeled APCs are down 30 percent. Nearly 40 percent of BMP tracked IFVs are gone. Just 15 percent of MT-LB armored tractors are left.

Vehicle losses, and the withdrawal of old vehicles from storage, have accelerated since December. Worse for the Russians: many of the vehicles remaining in storage are so badly rusted after decades of exposure to rain and snow that they’re useless as anything but scrap.

The result of this complicated math is that Russian regiments and brigades are running low on armored vehicles. They’ve compensated by using—and losing—more Chinese-made golf carts and Chinese and Belarusian motor bikes.

And if that one YPR-765 that showed up on the Russian side of the war in Donetsk is any indication, they’re also compensating by rolling into battle in captured Ukrainian vehicles.